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About Sundown Island
- Background
- Sundown Island Sanctuary, also locally known as Bird
Island, is a low-lying, seventy-acre island built from dredge
spoil in 1962. It is located near where the Matagorda ship
channel and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway cross in Matagorda
Bay, east of Port O'Connor and southeast of Port Lavaca, in the Texas
coastal bend. The Island is leased from the General Land Office
and managed by the National Audubon Society's Texas Coastal Sanctuaries
program, as part of the Society's 13,000-acre network of 33 islands
that stretch from Mexico to Louisiana. Chester
Smith is the local Bird Warden in charge of looking after
the Island.
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- The birds
- Of course, the interest on Sundown Island is the birds - thousands
of them. The island is set aside as a sanctuary for many birds,
common and endangered, both ones that nest there and others that
only pass through. There are at least 18
species of birds that call the Island home, ranging from the
Laughing Gulls (as many as 10,000!) to roughly 1,200 pair of endangered
Brown Pelicans and some threatened Reddish Egrets. In addition,
there are such spectacular birds as the White Ibis, the Great
Blue Heron, the Roseate Spoonbill, and the Black-crowned Night
Heron. The most visible bird life on the island is likely to be
the colonial water birds: as many as 25,000 pairs nest there in
a season, including Sandwich Terns, Royal Terns and others.
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- Concerns
- This important preserve is not entirely safe. Mr. Smith and
a troupe of volunteers fight a number of threats, including erosion
(nearly half of the island has been lost to wave action from boat
traffic), fire ants (40 nests of threatened reddish egret were
lost in 1994 to the ants), and hurricane tides (Tropical Storm
Arlene took out the nests of 500 royal terns, 1,700 Sandwich tTrns,
and 750 Black Skimmers).
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- Possible Answers
- There are a number of solutions that Audubon is trying, ranging
from sand-filled 300-foot-long geotubes to fight erosion, to the
control of fire ants with a product called Logic, to the proposed
use of concrete from the old Highway 35 causeway to shore up Sundown
Island against high tides and strong waves. Maybe you have an
idea for helping protect the Island -
we'd like to hear!
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