Drought helps North America's largest white pelican refuge
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Abnormally dry weather may bedevil farmers and ranchers, but is a boon for American white pelicans nesting on a North Dakota island known as North America's largest refuge for the big-billed birds.
A dry spell appears to have curbed years of wet weather and surging water levels that threatened to swamp the main nesting island at the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, said Neil Shook, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and refuge manager.
[...] the big birds, some of the largest in North America measuring 6 feet from bill to tail, still have plenty of nesting room, and an aerial survey completed this week showed some 27,120 breeding adults have returned from as far away as California and the Gulf Coast to raise their chicks.
Shook said that it may have just been a natural correction.
Since that scare, the population has remained healthy and hundreds of people continue to visit the refuge each year to see the nesting site from afar or in flight, where the acrobatic birds with a 10-foot wingspan are hard to miss.