River Authority: Bird rookery contributes to poor water quality in Brackenridge Park
https://sanantonioreport.org/river-a...kenridge-park/
On a recent early morning in Brackenridge Park, just south of Joske’s Pavilion, hundreds of egrets and other migrant birds squawked from the tops of a few dozen trees, their droppings crusted like white paint on the ground below. The air reeked of bird feces.
In the river next to the rookery, a man wearing hip-high waders filled a small bag with water as three dead cattle egrets floated by, pin feathers marking two as chicks.
Bacteria levels in this part of the river are higher than in any other place in the San Antonio River, according to the San Antonio River Authority.
Chris Vaughn, the man in the waders, gestured toward the birds. “When you have overcrowding like this, it’s just ripe conditions for disease and an unhealthy population,” he said.
An aquatic biologist who works for the river authority as a watershed monitoring supervisor, Vaughn said dead birds impact bacteria levels as well as feces from the rookery.
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Water quality from this testing site has been poor for the last several years, said Shaun Donovan, the river authority’s manager of environmental sciences, due to several factors, including an increase in bird feces since the bird population nearby has increased.
“The [measurement] for bacteria here is higher than any other place in San Antonio,” Donovan said, including of E.coli, which is considered a fecal indicator for fresh water.
E.coli levels in 2021 averaged 3 to 4 times higher than recreational standards, according to river authority data. Bacteria levels go down when aquifer spring flows are higher, such as in 2018, Donavan said, but even then, E.coli levels are higher at this spot in the park than most other places on the river.
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Garlock agreed it’s unhealthy for the birds to live in such tight quarters, but said it is the city’s fault the birds have had to congregate in such a small space. If the birds were allowed to spread out more, their population and feces wouldn’t be as concentrated, she said.
She added that the birds are already refugees, having relocated to the park after they were chased away from their former rookery near Kelly Field.
Donovan said he understands how stressful and tough on the birds it can be to move them from their nesting site in the park, but he thinks it’s the right thing to do.
“It would certainly make the water quality better here,” he said.
Donavan said he believes that in the long term, the birds will fare better somewhere where they can spread out more and eat healthier, which in turn will be healthier for the river and the humans who visit the park.
Beyond the loud noises, however, it’s unclear whether or how the city may try to move the birds after this nesting season.
In the past, efforts to create artificial nesting sites at Mitchell Lake on the city’s South Side didn’t work. The city has expressed a willingness to try such a project again, perhaps at Calaveras and Braunig lakes, as a former Audobon Society president has suggested.
“It’s not just, ‘We all want the birds gone because we want to go down the [playground] slide,’ it’s that we want the birds to be healthy, we want the river to be healthy, we want people to be healthy,” Donovan said.
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