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STEVEN JOHN: From Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Steven John. Governor Pawlenty flew over storm damaged parts of Nobles and Rock counties on his way to Farmfest today. The governor has asked the USDA to do a crop damage assessment, which is the first step to securing low-interest loans to affected farmers.

US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman was at the State Capitol this morning to announce more than $17 million in federal loans and grants to improve water quality in some areas of Minnesota. The ag secretary's appearance comes a day after President Bush was in the state touting his support for agriculture and the environment. Veneman said the assistance announced today will help 11 communities upgrade water and wastewater systems.

ANN VENEMAN: The projects we're funding include consolidation of water systems, new and upgraded sewage treatment facilities and infrastructure, new water wells, and other community health and safety needs.

STEVEN JOHN: The head of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says there are about $1 billion worth of water improvement projects identified in Minnesota. Still, that official called the $17 million new significant. The practice of double bunking inmates is blamed for recent unrest at Stillwater State Prison.

Deputy Corrections Commissioner Dennis Benson says the prison began the practice of putting two inmates in the same cell this spring because of overcrowding in the prison system. Earlier this week, two inmates assaulted a prison staff member, and attack Benson says apparently was in retaliation for the new policy. A cell block at the prison remains locked down after the assault. The staffer was treated at a hospital and returned to work yesterday.

Skies partly to mostly sunny for Minnesota today, and very comfortable. Temperatures mainly in the 70s. Continued mostly clear and cool tonight. Lows from around 40 in the northeast to the low 50s in the southwest. Currently 72 in the Twin Cities. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MIKE EDGERLY: Welcome back to Midday. I'm Mike Edgerly, in this week for Gary Eichten. This hour on Midday, we howl with the wolves and soar with the osprey. We have two Voices of Minnesota interviews about two of this country's most interesting predators and how they're faring in the wild. Here's Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: Peggy Callahan directs the Minnesota center that helps scientists understand wolves. And in the process, she's developed a pretty decent howl.

[WOLF HOWLING]

PEGGY CALLAHAN: I don't have any idea what I just said, but I'm guessing I said something highly intriguing, perhaps unrepeatable.

DAN OLSON: Stay tuned. We'll hear if Callahan's howl is convincing enough to get a response from the 40 or so wolves she works with every day. Biologist Mark Martell wants Minnesotans to help count osprey, a once threatened predator that is making a comeback.

MARK MARTELL: The Minnesota birds winter all the way from southern Mexico down into Brazil and in the Caribbean, and we have no idea why one winters in Mexico and another chooses Venezuela.

DAN OLSON: This hour on Voices of Minnesota, conversations about wolves and osprey with Peggy Callahan and Mark Martell. Peggy Callahan directs the Wildlife Science Center here at Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area, just north of the Twin Cities. The center is where legions of scientists, students, and others come to study wolves.

Study done here of the eastern gray wolves reproductive behavior helped lead the recovery of the endangered species. In fact, the center was the site chosen earlier this summer by the Interior Department for the location where Secretary Gayle Norton proposed removing the gray wolf from the endangered species list. Peggy Callahan is a Rochester, Minnesota native.

These days, the center is exploring ways to restore Mexican gray wolves to the Southwestern United States and red wolves to Southeastern states. Both are close to extinction. At one time, scientists say, there were only 14 reproductively viable red wolves and seven gray wolves left. Researchers at the Wildlife Science Center have, among other things, discovered ways to induce ovulation in female wolves.

The research helped scientists understand how to create and care for pups born in captivity that might be released in the wild. The scientists are also studying wolf contraception. Wearing jeans and a work shirt, Peggy Callahan led a tour of the center. It sits on 7 acres east of Forest Lake. There are several large pens with mature red and gray wolves. We walked on pathways among the pens as Callahan described the center's wolf breeding program.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: When we do things like arrange marriages, which is what we're doing with these animals, based on DNA, they don't always work, number one, for behavior reasons. And number two, these critters have gone through some population bottlenecks and have some trouble, for physical reasons, successfully reproducing in captivity.

DAN OLSON: There's a distinctly a genetic selection formula in your work, then. You're looking for the right mates, the right pairs.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: That's right. We base it on whether or not these are healthy individuals, but also, based on coefficients of relatedness. With seven founders to a population, we're not talking about drawing on a large gene pool. With the red wolf, there were 12 founders.

DAN OLSON: How can a viable population be created from so few critters?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, there's some good news, and that is that members of the dog family are very resistant to inbreeding, which is nice. And we're watching that play out in the wild on Isle Royale, where there were, essentially, two founders to that population. But we're still learning as we go. This captive breeding effort for carnivores with the red wolf was a first. So the Mexican gray being, really, a second successful captive breeding to reintroduction project.

DAN OLSON: So the puppies will be born here and then put in the wild?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: In some cases, they will, and in some cases, they won't. Some puppies that are born in captivity are deemed unreleasable for physical reasons, but in some cases, they are let go then.

DAN OLSON: So you're very careful about selection. You're not just creating little ones here and then just plopping them into a piece of wilderness somewhere.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: No. In fact, as important for breeding purposes is the contraception, because sometimes, these animals are housed in demographics that are not appropriate for breeding. But if I were to spay or neuter any of these guys, we would run the risk of eliminating a really important genetic individual. So that's one of the reasons why we're investigating contraception.

DAN OLSON: So we have how many wolves in Minnesota, do you think? I think I've seen you quoted as saying maybe 2,500?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Yeah. The last real official estimate was done by the Department of Natural Resources in 1998, and they came up with a number around 2,400 to 2,500. At a recent meeting where I did get to hear a bunch of biologists discussing this, they feel as though the population has stabilized, if not dropped just a little bit. So we probably haven't varied from that number very much.

DAN OLSON: And when you say they sometimes wander into areas that are inappropriate, farms, places where people are trying to raise sheep, calves, whatever.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Absolutely. And in some ways, what's happened is the wolf has recovered and gone back to areas they used to be native to, and lo and behold, we're there.

DAN OLSON: Are 2,500, 3,000 wolves, whatever, enough for a stable population in an area like Minnesota and surrounding neighborhood?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, biologists think so. But I'll tell you that we guess as we go. I remember hearing that Minnesota had a carrying capacity for black bears of 10,000, and we're well over that number now and don't appear to be exceeding our carrying capacity.

So I think there are two numbers that we're looking at, how much can the environment tolerate, and how much can the human population tolerate? And in some cases, there is no real number for that. One wolf is too many for some folks, whereas 2,500 is not enough for others.

DAN OLSON: Wolves are wild creatures. Given their druthers, they would not have anything to do with humans.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: I think we used to-- we used to fantasize that that was true, but I think humans are a source of great curiosity for wolves. They don't appear to avoid our areas of activity the way we thought they do. They're living on an active military base, Camp Ripley, and doing just fine.

I also think we're a great source of food. We leave garbage out. We have livestock. We have pets. And so I think it's not always the avoidance that we fantasized.

DAN OLSON: I don't know. You would know how smart wolves are, but regardless of how smart they are, they must be incredibly canny. Tell the story of some years ago, apparently, you were feeding roadkill deer to wolves. Apparently, you were pregnant. You didn't know it. Did the wolf know it?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, yes, apparently, he did. I may be completely wrong about the money interpretation here, but my guess is that it was something less sophisticated than him reading my mind. I'm guessing that I smelled different, maybe because I was sick to my stomach. Who knows?

But yes, indeed. One of these wolves that was actually hand-raised by me did something to me I had never seen him do. And he was seven years old at the time. He brought me food and presented it to me a number of times. And at first, I thought I was making this up, but he really was quite insistent and only left me alone when I took this food and pretended to eat it. It was a leg, so I only pretended to eat it.

DAN OLSON: We do want to romanticize and anthropomorphize animals all the time, but their intelligence, I gather, is different from human intelligence.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: It is different. And in fact, some researchers have found their intelligence is different than dogs, that they appear to be less capable of learning from human cues than domestic dogs do, which makes sense. These guys do very, very well in their environment. But the domestic dog has survived only because they've figured out how to, perhaps, manipulate us.

DAN OLSON: Peggy Callahan, the director of the Wildlife Science Center near Forest Lake. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson.

Callahan says you'll know immediately if you see a wolf. They can grow to 100 pounds, more than twice the size of coyotes, which are common in Minnesota. Callahan pointed to a pen of gray wolves. These two that we're coming upon, more gray wolves. The sign says more gray wolves. They're kind of pacing back and forth. They're just watching us.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Yeah. The difference between these guys and the ones we just looked at is that these animals are from Minnesota. Therefore, they're well-represented in the wild. The Mexican gray wolves are not. There are 50 Mexican gray wolves in the wild. There are 2,000 or so of these guys from Minnesota, and then, of course, the neighboring states.

So the animal that was brought to us here, these guys will never be considered for reintroduction purposes. Any wolf that develops this comfort around people, which you can see, we're 10 feet from him and he's quite comfortable observing us, would be a problem, a liability in the wild. So that's one of the struggles with any reintroduction from captivity. It's the worst possible thing to do, to release a wolf that's lived in captivity for a long time. It's only done when there's no other option.

So with Minnesota, there is another option. The animals are breeding well on their own in the wild. So if there's a problem wolf, it's either euthanized, or it's brought into captivity and it does not get to go back out.

DAN OLSON: You don't have a romanticized view of wolves living or dying. If they need to die, they're euthanized.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: I used to have a romantic view of it, but I no longer do. I think the best thing that could happen to these animals is these animals get viewed as the predators that they are. Nothing more, nothing less.

DAN OLSON: I'm stumped. I can't tell if these critters are different from the ones we've been looking at. The coats, the hair on the coats looks shorter.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: They are indeed different. This is a completely separate species. This is the red wolf. There are three species of wolves in the world, red wolves, gray wolves, and Ethiopian wolves.

DAN OLSON: OK, now I'm going to recover here and try to recover some of my ego and say, I do see-- do I see some redness around the ears and a little on the snout?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: You do. It's not fire engine red, but it's that characteristic rusty red brown of the red wolf.

DAN OLSON: The red wolf is significant. Why?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: We're the only country that has it, unless there were remnant populations in Canada, which hasn't been clearly established. This is the east wolf that was eliminated early on in the Northern European efforts and were reduced in number to 12 to 13 animals that were breeding.

DAN OLSON: And now, for the question so obvious I forgot to ask it, why do we want the wolf back in our biology, back in our environment?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, the wolf is a top end predator, and our goal, really, is ecosystem recovery. And when we don't put all the pieces back, there seems to be things that just don't click well. And Yellowstone has shown us so much interesting things. An example of that would be the birds of prey.

When wolves came back to Yellowstone, the first thing they did was impact the coyote population. And the estimations were that they impacted 25% of the coyote population by killing them or driving them out. Suddenly, or fairly suddenly, the raptor population increased in number and diversity. Well, it turns out, of course, the coyote population would put a different kind of pressure on the small prey populations that the raptors depend on. So there is this really interesting domino effect in ecosystems when a top end predator is missing.

DAN OLSON: Back to our friend, the red wolf here in front of us. They have been reintroduced in Mexico?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: North Carolina. These guys are east. North Carolina, the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. And that actually started in '87. And they continue to be worked on very actively.

The problem with red wolves is that the red wolf, when it was native to the Eastern part of the United states, never, ever had any contact with coyotes. And now, we have coyotes that have moved from west to east because of the absence of the wolf, and they have encountered this Eastern wolf and there is no behavioral barrier against breeding. And so coyote genetic introgression is the biggest threat to the red wolf.

DAN OLSON: Why? What will happen. What's bad about the mixing of coyote and red wolf?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, that's a very interesting question, because we're learning through DNA that we have defined species based on some very rudimentary data. But the problem is that if we strive to replace what was there, the coyote has a vastly different impact on prey populations than the red wolf does. This is a larger animal with a little bit different social structure and has a different impact on the large ungulates in the population, which is their primary food base.

DAN OLSON: They look, again, very relaxed and we haven't heard any howling. Maybe that has to do with the fact that it's morning?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: It's windy, and I'm certainly happy to try to get people to howl, because it's one of the things that is a characteristic sign of these guys, but they tend to be a little cautious about howling in the wind.

DAN OLSON: What's that about?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, if you're howling, you're making an awful lot of noise and it's difficult to locate responses. And when it's windy, they tend to be even a little more cautious.

DAN OLSON: Because howling is important to wolves for telling each other where they are and if they found something to eat?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: - Well, telling where they are is a good sort of overall description, because that can mean, stay out of my property or I've lost you or any number of different things. But really, we see it as a primary territory marking technique.

DAN OLSON: A bit later in the tour of the Wildlife Science Center, Peggy Callahan did some howling. Stay tuned to hear what happened. Scientists use the Center for study, but the most frequent visitors are school students.

What's your design on this Wildlife Science Center? What do you want it to be? What are its goals?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: - Well, we consider the wolf as a wonderful starting place to learn about any number of things. Our education programs are science based. So if you use the wolf as an attractant, which everybody pays attention to wolves-- whether they love 'em or hate 'em, you've got their attention-- it's a great starting place for everything from biology, physiology, behavior to culture, history, politics, any number of different things.

We've had art classes out here. We've had literature classes out here. So it's a wonderful place to start. Selfishly speaking, I also am really hopeful that our education programs foster an interest and passion for the out-of-doors, no matter what that's manifest. Because if we value it, we save it.

DAN OLSON: You're a city kid, sort of, kind of, as you grew up. How did you become so interested in the out-of-doors?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: I don't know. I think rather than looking at how we get interested, I think my question is, how do kids get disinterested? Because I think it's very natural for kids to want to be outdoors. And my parents allowed it and fostered it. So I was-- my mom birded with Roger Tory Peterson, so that was her claim to fame. And I really pursued that.

And I learned to hunt by studying wolves, and that has been a very important piece for me-- to understand that, to me, hunting is the ultimate environmental activist thing to do, because it is low impact on the land. Every time I buy a hunting license, it contributes to places like Carlos Avery. So to me, the wolf is a wonderful place to start.

I didn't learn to hunt from people. I learned to hunt from the wolves.

DAN OLSON: You were pretty avidly antihunting at one point, apparently, according to what I've read about you. What turned you?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: A question from a seven-year-old boy [LAUGHS] who asked me, how did I know that wolves killed in the absence of malice? Did I kill my own food? And at that time, I hadn't. So I made the choice I needed to try. And I didn't expect to love it, but I do.

DAN OLSON: Well, I don't have to tell you how controversial hunting is or not hunting is in a state like Minnesota. You called it low impact, low impact activity. And yet we see hunters with-- the four-wheelers, two or three at a time pulled by their pickup trucks heading up north. It looks high impact at that point.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, I'll tell you, the majority of hunters aren't astride a four-wheeler, but, you know, you raise a good point. Unfortunately, folks that abuse privileges undermine the opportunities for all of us, and so that's true whether you're a snowmobiler or a hunter or somebody-- an angler-- or just somebody who enjoys water recreation. We all get frustrated by people who abuse those.

DAN OLSON: I suppose the concern among people who oppose hunting is, well, the populations of wildlife in Minnesota, whether it be pheasant or you name it, we've pretty much gone through everything. And there isn't enough left to hunt. We're endangering the populations.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: On the contrary. Hunting is one of those things that, in fact, supports populations, purchases habitat places for breeding, and harvest limits are really based on surplus populations. So it's very exciting to look at what hunting has done for numbers.

DAN OLSON: Do you hunt-- I think I've read that you're an avid duck hunter. And so you sit out there along with all of the other frozen Minnesotans. And your retriever? Say a word about your retriever.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: [LAUGHS] I hunted birds for 14 years over a German shepherd. She's fabulous. They're compulsive dogs, and she would do anything to bring me the bird. When I missed, she retrieved the shotgun wad, so [LAUGHS] she was driven. It was a wonderful experience.

DAN OLSON: Wildlife Science Center director Peggy Callahan leads us to another pen of critters. They are six wolf-like animals, but they are clearly not wolves. Callahan explains they are half wolf, half dog. She says she's either rescued them, or their owners have brought them to the center voluntarily. Callahan says the animals are the result of what she views as a misguided human fascination.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: The problem with wolf-dog hybrids, the way I see it, is there are many levels to the problems. Number one, it's very difficult to provide for these animals humanely, because when they mature, they are not nearly as malleable as dogs. So it's very difficult to actually provide medically for them. Number two, when they do something aggressive toward a human, any reports that result usually paint the picture of a wolf doing the bad stuff, which we don't need any more bad press for wolves.

And number three, if these animals successfully get back into the wild and survive-- and I'm knocking on wood, because they don't appear to be equipped to handle it-- we have just introduced a predator about which we know nothing. And I get about an average of 10 to 15 phone calls a month from people who cannot handle their hybrid anymore. In fact, I got two just yesterday, and this is just a huge problem.

DAN OLSON: What is it? Is it some sort of subculture of people who are interested in trying to breed wolves and dogs and keep doing it?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: That's a good description. That's a good description. Yes, there are a lot of people, and some people, it's just a misinformed idea of what kind of relationship they can have with a wolf.

DAN OLSON: And so what is the result very often? What kind of a creature do they get?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, we have to understand the impact of domestication. We spent 20,000 years or so selecting against the very characteristics that will make or break the survival of the wolf. A wolf that takes over its pack in the wild is most likely to succeed. A dog that takes over the household is most likely to be euthanized.

So we spent a lot of years creating the dog that's always going to let you be the boss. I'm not going to go home from work tonight and expect the dogs to be saying, OK, today's the day I'm going to kill you and take over the house. But that behavior is selected for in a wolf pack. You mix the two, and you get an animal that's an unknown. And when it decides to take over the household, we're really poorly equipped to deal with it.

This group is here because they killed the neighbor's dog when they were only seven months of age. They were owned by one guy, and they wandered next door and killed the neighbor's dog.

DAN OLSON: There are several of them in the pen here in front of us, and I can see the wolf-like characteristics. But they're also kind of, sort of pretty clearly dogs.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: That's right, and there is no science that we have right now that we can take a blood sample and say, this is how much wolf, and this is how much dog. The dog genome has not even been mapped yet, where that's expected to be done sometime this spring. So it's a little preliminary for us to be able to diagnose what a wolf hybrid is.

DAN OLSON: What does it sound like when 40 wolves create a chorus? You'll hear in a few moments. Wildlife Science Center director Peggy Callahan knows the pedigree of every animal in the place. Some of the wolves have come from far-flung locations.

Here we have more wolves, apparently, and yeah, oh, OK, there we-- they're just sort of taking a siesta, I guess. So in these pens, we're looking at creatures that on a given day they might be useful to you In what way?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, in about a half an hour, we're going to have 100 kids walking through the gate, and they will be useful in educating those children on a number of different levels. These particular animals are some of the ones you referred to earlier. They were flown in from Canada.

So these are known origin, wild wolves from the western part of Canada. So for genetics purposes, there's keen interest in having their blood. These animals participated in two different studies. They participated in a reproductive enhancement study that was incredibly successful and will be presented in Brazil this year and is actually being implemented in the Mexican gray wolf project.

This year, they participated in what has turned out to be a very successful contraceptive study. So they're useful on absolutely every level.

DAN OLSON: I'm interested-- I think I read a tiny account of how they came to you. Somebody shot the mother, and these were the pups?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: That's correct. The mother was taken legally. It's legal to hunt wolves in Canada. But there is an ethical issue if you find young, and that's where he messed up and he ceased to be a hunter and became a law violator-- took the pups home and got in trouble for it.

DAN OLSON: This is a natural instinct of human beings, apparently. We see something small and furry in the wild that looks as though it's alone and orphaned, and we want to go pick it up. We're advised that's almost always-- apparently always-- a bad idea.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Well, there are cases where hunters are absolutely obligated to pick them up. In cases of mountain lion hunts where they orphan-- they actually are the act that orphans the kittens, they are obligated to pursue the young. But then the next step is to turn those animals over to an official rather than to take them home and try to raise them. Most folks are not equipped with the information, and this guy was no exception.

Well, let me try a howl.

DAN OLSON: Howling would be good.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: OK. I'll see if I can get them--

DAN OLSON: Here Peggy Callahan from the Wildlife Science Center is going to make like a wolf.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: [HOWLS]

DAN OLSON: You certainly have their attention. Why do you think they're interested in you?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: I don't have any idea what I just said, but I'm guessing I said something highly intriguing, [LAUGHS] perhaps unrepeatable.

DAN OLSON: Because they came right to you, these four.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: They did. The howling is also a rallying call for wolves. So when one pack member will howl, or if they hear a howl, they will rally. And that may really play a role in this whole territory establishment. They re-establish their own social structure by close contact and body expression. So howling is really a complicated issue.

DAN OLSON: And we'll let you get back to the howling in just a second, because I think although their attention span is very short now-- they've gone away, and they said, what was that all about?

PEGGY CALLAHAN (LAUGHING): What was that?

DAN OLSON: Forget it.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: That's right.

DAN OLSON: OK, but on the howl, you cupped your hands, and then you kind of broke. You went from your low register to your high register with a little bit of almost like a yodel break.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: That's right. That best mimics them. I don't have that fabulous long muzzle. So I cup my hands in order to try to magnify the sound a little bit. [HOWLS]

[HOWLING]

DAN OLSON: What did you do? You woke the entire place up.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: You see why we're on Carlos Avery? [LAUGHS]

[HOWLING]

DAN OLSON: On a cold winter night with a full moon, that must be quite an experience.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: It's fantastic.

DAN OLSON: So in the broad area of species preservation, is it a case that places around the world can save semen and share it, and from that will grow viable populations of critters that have been endangered?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: It's certainly one of the goals. One of the problems that we're running into is that the semen's got to be good quality to begin with. And the red wolves and Mexican gray wolves don't have great semen, so they have low reproductive success in optimum conditions. The males are just producing bad sperm quality, low count, low motility.

So freezing semen, some of it dies no matter what. And so you're counting on a really high, high sperm count, so that's one of the problems with this whole idea.

DAN OLSON: Is that because of their very, very low numbers? So their gene pool is not so good for being able to reproduce?

PEGGY CALLAHAN: We presume that's one of the reasons. I think the other problem is captive breeding. There's no way for us to really effectively mimic natural selection. We do our very best, but animals that probably should die do not and mature and become part of the breeding population. And there's no way for us to know which animals should or should not die.

We do the best based on, are they healthy? Are they related? But that's not how nature does it. It's much more complex.

DAN OLSON: Peggy Callahan, a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

PEGGY CALLAHAN: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure for me, too.

DAN OLSON: Peggy Callahan is the director of the Wildlife Science Center near Forest Lake in East Central Minnesota. The Center is helping lead the way in restoring US wolf populations.

[TRIBAL MUSIC]

You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olson, and now for a chat about a predator with wings, the osprey. Here's Minnesota Public Radio's Mike Edgerly.

[FUN MUSIC]

MIKE EDGERLY: To even the most casual of birdwatchers, there's no other bird quite like the osprey. Brown and white with a body smaller than the eagle, Its wings span almost six feet. It dives to lift fish from rivers and lakes. And once airborne, the bird swiftly rotates its catch to carry it parallel to its body, reducing aerodynamic drag. Its high-pitched squeal is the signature sound of water and woods.

The osprey, like the eagle, was once almost wiped out by DDT, the felling of big trees, where it likes to nest, and by shooting. Also like the eagle, the osprey is now doing well in Minnesota. To find out how well, the Minnesota DNR and Audubon Minnesota mounted the state's first-ever osprey census this summer. Mark Martel, the director of bird conservation for Audubon Minnesota, has studied the bird for 20 years. He's one of the organizers of the osprey count.

Why do birds of prey like osprey matter? Or do they, except for people who like to stand in the weeds and on the water and watch them hunt and listen to their calls?

MARK MARTELL: Well, there's an awful lot of people who like to stand in the weeds and listen to 'em and watch 'em, so that's a big, important one. And I certainly count myself among those. They're top of the food chain predator, and they're one of those birds, one of those animals that is very susceptible to things that happen in the environment.

We know that the first signs of DDT affecting our populations were the decline of bald eagles and peregrines and ospreys. That's important. As we have habitat loss, we know that's important. These birds in particular, ospreys, are migrants to South and Central America. And so things that might be going on their migratory routes, those are all the kinds of warnings that they can give us of things that are going on.

MIKE EDGERLY: Uh-huh. Talk a little bit about the nature of the bird. I can remember the first osprey I'd ever seen in the wild. I was on a lake in a canoe in Yellowstone Park, and I saw a bird come down to the water, take a fish. And then extraordinarily, it seemed, it rotated the fish in its talons and didn't carry it sideways, but seemed to carry it perpendicular to its body. Was I imagining that, or did that really happen?

MARK MARTELL: No, that really happens. I mean, they're quite aware of aerodynamics, and their feet are actually very flex-- have scales all the bottom. They're very flexible. The outer toe can either face forward or backward, which is sort of a hard concept to imagine. So they're very adept at moving the fish around.

As you mentioned, they're fish eaters. They have a really good sense of property. I mean, they like really nice places. Yellowstone, Northern Minnesota, Sanibel Island in Florida, the migratory-- I've been doing a lot of migration studies, and it takes me also some of the nicest places around-- the Columbia River. We've done it all up and down the East Coast of the US-- Scotland. So they like really nice places, so we give them credit for that.

But one of the things that has always fascinated people about 'em is not just their ability to catch fish but also they are very loyal to their nest sites. So they'll come back to the same nest year after year like eagles. The nest will keep building. This platform's probably been occupied now for 10 years. Studies that we've been doing in the Twin Cities show that those individuals tend to keep coming back year after-- to the same nest year after year, as long as they have been successful.

Our migration studies that we've been using the satellite tracking units on, they go down to the exact same wintering area. So they are very loyal to places.

MIKE EDGERLY: Sort of the salmon of the air.

MARK MARTELL: Yeah, salmon. I've never thought of that. Salmon of the air, although they eat the salmon of the water. But that actually is another thing. People who have ospreys or know of ospreys, you know, can rely on them coming back almost on the same date every year. So people get a real affection for them as well because of that.

MIKE EDGERLY: Well, it seems as if there isn't anything we don't know about the bald eagle, but it would seem that there is a fair bit we don't know about at least the numbers of osprey and how many were here at one point 150 or 200 years ago. Why don't we know more about this bird which, in some ways, is every bit as majestic as the bald eagle?

MARK MARTELL: Well, there's a couple of reasons. We have data on ospreys from certain parts of the state, like the National Forest. Statewide inventories haven't been done. Part of it is, you know, it's just the bottom line. Bald eagles being the national symbol have always drawn attention and rightly so. So we've always kept good track of them, and the public has been interested in them as the national symbol. So there's been more pressure to do that.

The assumption has been as osprey-- as bald eagle populations go, ospreys populations go. Probably not as true as we once thought. We're seeing more and more that actually the two species are in not just competition for fish, but also for out and out conflict with each other over nesting sites and things like that. So rising bald eagle populations may not be the best thing for osprey populations.

MIKE EDGERLY: In a struggle over a prime nesting site or a prime fishing spot, who would-- which species would win out, do you think, one on one?

MARK MARTELL: Bald Eagles weigh about 12 pounds. Ospreys weigh about four. You can do the math. [LAUGHS]

MIKE EDGERLY: Sort of a guard versus power forward.

MARK MARTELL: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. It's not-- it's really no contest. Eagles are much, much larger and more aggressive than ospreys.

MIKE EDGERLY: How did you get interested in ospreys? You said in an email you'd been talking about ospreys for 20 years. Did you just wake up one day or--

MARK MARTELL: [LAUGHS]

MIKE EDGERLY: --emerge in class and say, well, I think the osprey is for me.

MARK MARTELL: No, it actually-- I worked at the rap-- when I started becoming really interested in raptors was when I worked at the Raptor Center at the university. And we were asked to get involved with the reintroduction, which at that point was a great thought in the minds of the folks over at Hennepin Parks. And so we were a logical-- we had been involved in peregrine falcon releases and bald eagle releases, and so we knew a lot about reintroduction.

So I got involved in 'em that way. And as the bird grew on me pretty quickly, and we were pretty interested. And then so we did those releases, and then as it started growing, we started asking just the logical questions. Where are they going in the winter? And generally we know South America. But beyond that, we didn't have a whole lot of information.

And right about that time is when the technology was taking off to be able to track these birds across the hemisphere, and we started to do that. And so it just kind of grew that way, really.

MIKE EDGERLY: Did you grow up here in the city or in the country? Did you have a fascination with birds of prey as a kid? Or did this come to you later in life.

MARK MARTELL: No, it came to me later. I grew up near Milwaukee, and I don't ever remember seeing a-- I doubt I ever saw an osprey around Milwaukee. And so, no, it really came on later in life. It came on as something that, as I started getting out more, I probably-- I'm guessing I probably saw my first osprey in the Boundary Waters when we used to-- you know, my first trips there.

MIKE EDGERLY: Mark Martell has arranged a visit to see some ospreys in their nest a half hour north of downtown Saint Paul. We stand in a wooded suburban backyard, a stone's throw from I-35. If drivers whizzing past were to look to the west, they would see the bird's nest of sticks arranged on a nesting platform on top of a tall utility pole. These osprey are part of a group Martell helped reintroduce into the Twin Cities years ago. He trains his binoculars on the nest 50 yards away.

Who erected the stand for the nest? How did that come to be?

MARK MARTELL: The people who own the property-- all the birds in the Twin Cities came from a reintroduction that happened back, started back about 1985. And what used to be called Hennepin Parks is now Three Rivers Parks district and the Raptor Center. And then some local folks from the North Oaks area got together and did an osprey reintroduction.

We took ospreys out of the Brainerd area from-- there's a big DC power line that runs across the state, and ospreys nest on there. So we took young from there, released him in the Twin Cities, and all of the osprey in the Twin Cities are from there. As part of that effort, then, because the people that own this property have been involved in wildlife for a long time, and so they had the pole erected. I think one of the power companies erected the pole and is how it physically got up.

There's two poles at this site-- the one that they used to use, which is a little closer to the house, and then we tried-- they nested on this pole for many years, and then we tried to get a second pair here, and as sort of a little experiment, tried to see how close we could get birds to each other. In some places, ospreys will nest very close to each.

MIKE EDGERLY: That's one now, isn't it?

MARK MARTELL: That's the female calling. Yeah, she's actually calling. No, she's calling because the male is coming--

MIKE EDGERLY: Here he comes.

MARK MARTELL: --is what's happening.

MIKE EDGERLY: So what are we seeing here?

MARK MARTELL: She was calling either because he was coming in, or her calling attracted him. It's hard to know. But she does-- the male does all the hunting for the young and the female during this part of the season. And so in order to get him to hunt and bring food in, she makes that call. And now he's coming in response to that, but I was looking. He doesn't have any food in his feet. Now he's going to land on the nest right now.

So he nests. We put, in addition to the platform, then we put a little perch for him, because he likes to sit there. So she expects him to bring food in. She spends the time at the nest. He brings food in. She does most of the feeding of the young.

And that'll go on for-- the young start flying on their own at about eight weeks of age.

MIKE EDGERLY: We're in suburban Twin Cities. There's a body of water nearby, interstate nearby. So they've got everything they need, presumably, but they're not affected by the traffic and the fact that there are houses and fairly large theater complex nearby.

MARK MARTELL: They were here before the theater complex came in. They were here obviously after the interstate was put in. They will tolerate a certain amount of activity around them but not-- interestingly, we don't have any ospreys nesting within the 694/494 Beltway. That seems to be too much.

So basically we have sort of a cluster of birds up here and kind of considered the northeast area, north of 694 and between 35E and 35W, so Hugo Centerville area. And this is a result primarily of a release that was done in North Oak, so some of their offspring came. But even more so, once birds started nesting, other ospreys got attracted.

So we're basically over here, and there's ospreys all around us. The other group is over in Carver Park, which is over in the Lake Minnetonka area. and again, as a result of releases there. And then there's a little cluster up here in the Wright County area, so they do tend to cluster.

MIKE EDGERLY: How does the population of ospreys compare to bald eagles in the Twin Cities? Are they outnumbered?

MARK MARTELL: Bald eagle, the last I heard, the DNR estimated there were about 60 pair of bald eagles in the Twin Cities area. So ospreys are outnumbered.

MIKE EDGERLY: Would that be akin to what might have been present in the era before the numbers of osprey were taken down?

MARK MARTELL: You know, I really don't, because we don't have a good handle on numbers of birds before DDT and before the declines happened. We know that ospreys nested in the Hennepin Ramsey County area. There are indications of that. They stopped nesting here late 1800s, probably due to shooting and the loss of large trees. Bald eagles, pretty much the same story. But nobody ever really gave us counts of them, so I don't know how to compare numbers.

MIKE EDGERLY: And so that brings us to the census that you're involved with now.

MARK MARTELL: Right. For the first time, we're looking at a statewide census, and this is a combined effort of Audubon Minnesota, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources nongame program. And the primary funding is coming from those really nice loon license plates. And so thank you, loon license plate buyers.

So what we're trying to do for the first time is get a statewide inventory of ospreys. We've always had a kind of a guess, you know, an educated guess of how many. But this is the first time we've really gone out and looked at the number, tried to count all of the birds. We know we're not going to get all of the birds. Ospreys are hard to count, so we're looking at people-- citizen involvement.

We're doing aerial surveys. We've got researchers out looking, things like that.

MIKE EDGERLY: So if you're a citizen, how would you do this? Do you look for nests? Do you look for birds over a piece of water where you're boating or fishing or something?

MARK MARTELL: Exactly. What we need, what we're asking people to do is where they know there's ospreys. And this is really at this point more outside of the Twin Cities area than in the Twin Cities. But people who own cabins on lakes or go fishing or hiking, if you come on an osprey nest, report it either to Audubon Minnesota, or preferably contact the DNR office in Brainerd. They're the ones that are keeping the master database. And so that's the kind of information we're looking for.

MIKE EDGERLY: What do we know about the ospreys health generally in Minnesota and the region and maybe even nationally? Are they are they on the rebound?

MARK MARTELL: They're definitely on the rebound. With the banning of DDT back in the 1970s, osprey populations have recovered really worldwide. But especially in the United States, we've seen a really good recovery. In Minnesota, we've seen a-- we don't have good numbers, but we believe that the numbers of birds have increased. And due to some natural movement, as well as the reintroduction efforts that have been going on here and in some other parts of the state, they've expanded their range as well.

MIKE EDGERLY: Mark Martel, director of bird conservation with Audubon Minnesota. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Mike Edgerly.

We're standing 50 yards away from an osprey nest in a suburban backyard about a half hour north of downtown Saint Paul. Within the story of the osprey resides several of nature's puzzles. Among the more intriguing, how do ospreys know where to migrate in the winter? Martell is one of the country's leading authorities on osprey migration.

Are there any basic questions that remain to be answered about the osprey?

MARK MARTELL: Well, I think one of the-- I mean, one of the questions we're trying to get at is the one we're trying to answer this year. Just how many of them are there in the state? Where are they nesting? What kind of structures? Which then lead automatically to if they're-- one of the things we're seeing just in our initial look at the data is that there are not a lot of ospreys up in Cook county, for example. Why not there?

There's a lot of ospreys around Brainerd. So we've got some questions as to just why they're picking certain areas and not others. The whole question of interacting with eagles is really interesting.

I think one of the things we're seeing, kind of the living laboratory right now is how much tolerance ospreys will have for the increasing development that's occurring around the Twin Cities. Are they going to be able to tolerate this? You mentioned some new development across the road from the pair we're looking at right now. How much is too much before they just give up and say they can't handle it anymore?

So there's questions like that that are, I think, really interesting. And then there's some of the broader questions just about migration and why they're choosing where they migrate to. Interestingly, the Minnesota birds winter all the way from southern Mexico down into Brazil and in the Caribbean, and we have no idea why one winters in Mexico and another chooses Venezuela. So just some things like that.

MIKE EDGERLY: Do birds mate for life?

MARK MARTELL: They tend to mate for life, but they're not 100%. It's probably more accurate to say that individuals are very loyal to their nest. And as long as both individuals come back, they will stick together. But if one disappears, then the other bird will quickly take on another mate.

And one of the first things we learned on our migration study was that they are not migrating or wintering together. So they're only-- the pair is only together during the breeding season.

MIKE EDGERLY: I read, I believe, that ospreys don't do well at places like the Raptor Center, for example. They don't do well in captivity, or they don't do well when they're being rehabbed. They tend to-- they just don't take to that. Is that true?

MARK MARTELL: Yeah, although it's not necessarily a rehab thing. Eagles don't-- or I'm sorry, ospreys do not do well in captivity. That's right. You don't see ospreys in zoos. Rehabbers have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. They are getting better at keeping them in a rehab situation, but that's really diametrically opposed to bald eagles, for example, which are fairly easy to keep in captivity. You see them in a lot of zoos.

I don't know the current numbers, but the Raptor Center's probably done 1,000 bald Eagles, which is one of the things that actually makes ospreys even a little more interesting is that, you know, there's something about 'em that just doesn't take to captivity. And you got to really respect that in a bird.

MIKE EDGERLY: Right. They just say, no, thanks.

MARK MARTELL: Apparently, yes. There's something about 'em-- although they will nest-- you know, we're not too far from one here in standing in somebody's backyard, so they'll do that. But if we try to put it in captivity, it just wouldn't survive.

[BIRD CHIRPING]

What she's doing, I think she's feeding the young right now is what we're seeing. As can see, she's--

MIKE EDGERLY: Can you describe what you see up there?

MARK MARTELL: Yeah. We've got the female, and what she's doing is she's standing on the nest, and she's hunched over. And what she-- we can see her body sort of bobbing up and down, her head coming up and down, which is very typical of what they do when they're tearing pieces of fish off and feeding them to the young. So what happens is the male brings in a fish, and the female rips off tiny little pieces and then puts them either in the mouth of the chicks, or the chicks pick the little tidbits of food right off of the female's beak.

And she'll spend as much time doing that as need to until all of the young get-- until she's used up all the food or the young have all been fed. So she might spend an hour feeding 'em if need be.

MIKE EDGERLY: How do the young birds learn to fish?

MARK MARTELL: A lot of it's really by trial and error. One of the reasons we were able to reintroduce young from Northern Minnesota to the Twin Cities was that when the young were ready to fly, they went out, and they instinctively started going, chasing fish. They instinctively tried grabbing fish out of the water.

They're not very good at it at first, but through trial and error, they do learn how to do it. Then they do feed themselves and then start weaning themselves away from it. The adults will continue to feed them during that process of trial and error, and they probably do learn something by watching the adults. But for the most part, it's on their own.

MIKE EDGERLY: It must be really smelly up there where all those fish entrails are left, huh?

MARK MARTELL: Actually, they're really good at cleaning up after themselves. What they don't eat, they get rid of. So osprey nests aren't the nicest places in the world, but they're not as bad as you would think, actually.

MIKE EDGERLY: How many of these artificial or human-erected posts are around the cities? Do you have idea how many--

MARK MARTELL: I know of probably around 50, but the-- people, I mean, anybody can put up an osprey platform. So sometimes we don't find out about 'em until [LAUGHS] until there's birds on 'em. So I couldn't really give you the ultimate number. But at least 50 around the Twin Cities.

MIKE EDGERLY: And tell me again what happens. The birds learn to-- they learn to feed, probably watching mom and dad and doing it on their own. And how soon will they-- will they stay with the parents, then, until migration time?

MARK MARTELL: No, what we-- one of the things that we've learned in the last few years is that the general rule is that the youngsters fledge or start flying right around mid-August in this part, in the Twin Cities. Right about that time, once the young are on the wing, the females tend to leave on migration. Some of 'em do it earlier than others. But the female leave before the youngsters do.

The youngsters then continue to learn how to fish. The male sticks around. And remember, as I said before, he's the one who's bringing 'em food. So the youngsters stick around, and then leave on their own on migration. Once they're gone, then the male leaves. So they're all being very independent. And that's one of the really fascinating things, and one of the sort of unanswered questions is how these youngsters know where to go and find wintering grounds.

We've been able to track entire families, and each individual of the family has their own wintering area totally apart from the other one. I can think of one family in particular where the male winters in Chiapas, Mexico, the female winters in Venezuela, and then there were two youngsters. We tracked one year one wintered in Panama and the other in Colombia.

So different timing, different places. They even take different routes. So they're just-- no, they're not learning that from the adults. They just instinctively know to go south, and then I don't know what they look for. [LAUGHS] A nice hammock? I don't know.

MIKE EDGERLY: Well, salmon seem to smell something in the river--

MARK MARTELL: Yeah.

MIKE EDGERLY: --to put it bluntly. But I mean, is there something that birds may sense--

MARK MARTELL: Well, bir--

MIKE EDGERLY: --on the breeze or something?

MARK MARTELL: Well, birds in general, we know, migrate-- will use the stars, the position of the sun. They seem to be able to detect electromagnetic fields on the Earth. So they do have the ability to navigate using those kind of clues. But navigation, when you think about it, navigation's only half the battle. The other half is having that map.

And so you've got-- you know, navigation's good if you know where you're going. So while we don't have a real clear picture of how ospreys know where they're going, I think I have even a less good clear picture of how they know where they wanna end up. Once they've picked a wintering ground, they go to it every year.

So the adults go back to the same place every year. But how they pick that place in the first time around, I don't know.

MIKE EDGERLY: Maybe just chance.

MARK MARTELL: Well, it might be chance, but, you know, that's just-- it's unsatisfying, you know? [LAUGHS] There's something romantic about it, but it's a little unsatisfying. Yeah.

MIKE EDGERLY: Nature doesn't deal with chance, probably.

MARK MARTELL: You'd like to think not, but maybe more than we give 'em credit for.

MIKE EDGERLY: Mark Martel, director of bird conservation for Audubon Minnesota. He's one of the organizers of the state's first ever count of ospreys. If you know of an osprey nest and wish to report it for the census, you can contact Audubon Minnesota or go to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources website. You've been listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. The producer is Dan Olson. I'm Mike Edgerly.

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LYNNE ROSETTO KASPER: Hi, it's Lynne Rossetto Kasper. This week we beat the heat with author and famed Indian actress Madhur Jaffrey, Josh Wesson takes on German wine labels-- no small task-- and Michael Sturm?

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