Eureka Springs is the winter home for hundreds of black vultures and a small number of turkey vultures that roost in trees near Harmon Park. The large birds can kill trees and underlying vegetation because of the toxicity of their excrement. During the day, they can be seen perching on historic buildings. They can damage roofs and some people who live near the roosts are concerned about unpleasant odors and potential human health effects.
“Eureka Springs has a bad, bad black vulture problem these days,” one resident said. “While they were once all located in Fuller Holler (between Ridgeway and Linwood), their numbers have increased such that now they roost all over town – upwards of two thousand birds. On winter days, up to fifty at a time perch atop the Basin Park Hotel, the library and the Ellis House – not to mention in many trees scattered around town, all which are dying slow deaths due to these vile creatures. I’m afraid if something isn’t done soon, it could spell doom for our lovely, mountainshire.”
Another take is that vultures are an intricate part of the ecosystem that play a valuable role in eating dead animals.
The vultures were here first.
“Most problems with vultures are a result of the human population growth pushing into areas that vultures have probably used for thousands of years,” Joe Neal, retired U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist and co-author of Arkansas Birds, said. “Vultures are protected under the International Bird Treaty Act and also under state law. If anybody wants to control numbers by some technique like shooting, they have to have a permit from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. They sometimes give permits for a limited amount of control measures, but the situation has to be investigated. You can’t just get rid of them because you don’t like vultures.”
Neal doubts there are 2,000 vultures roosting in Eureka Springs. If so, it would be the largest roost in the region. But he said it wouldn’t surprise him if their numbers are increasing.
“As the human population has grown in the Ozarks, there is a lot more food for vultures,” Neal said. “The deer populations have grown. People are driving faster on the highway. They hit deer and those deer are left on the roadside. Then vultures are doing exactly what God intended them to do, which is clean up dead things – snakes, possum, skunks, you name it. It is all left out there on the side of the highways and it is all feeding the vultures. Historically there were very few people in the Ozarks. I never saw deer carcasses along the highway until the past twenty years.”
Neal understands the buzzards may not be pleasant for people who live nearby, but expects the colony was there before any houses were built.
“As a point of equity, instead of thinking of this as some kind of plague that nature has put on us, people can use a little science and thinking to consider the source of the problems are usually the people, and the way we use the landscape,” he said. “Some aren’t willing to share the land with the creatures who lived here before us.”
Concerns have been raised about the impact to Cardinal Spring below one roost where salamanders and Williams’ crayfish have been found. But Neal said he doubts that vulture pollution impacts those species because they live underground in caves. Water testing at Cardinal Spring that could indicate whether or not the birds are a problem.
Vultures are soaring birds. They depend on rising temperatures for their flights that can range up to 200 miles a day for turkey vultures. They form roosts in areas conducive to catching updrafts of warm air columns.
Vultures are seen soaring overhead close to dusk when they return to their roosts. Some find them beautiful to watch, but birds can carry and transmit a wide range of pathogens, according to Cornell University researchers. Another argument is made that by eating diseased animals, vultures help prevent the spread of diseases like rabies.
Local bird lover and feather artist Gwen Bennett has watched vultures evade control measures, such as motion detector water sprinklers on buildings.
“They are smart enough to step outside the water,” Bennett. “It is a hard nut to crack. They are a protected animal you aren’t allowed to kill. Remember migrant black vultures will be leaving in March. And some towns love their vultures. In Hinkley, Ohio, they have a festival every year celebrating the return of the vultures which happens every March 15.”
Christopher Fischer, who has training as an arborist, can see things from both sides. He used to live on Ridgeway and had purchased a home there without realizing there was a large vulture roost nearby.
“No one mentioned the nearby roost,” said Fischer, who has since moved out of town. “They were congregating in the ravine near Harmon Park. There was a sizeable sycamore tree on Fuller Street where the buzzards roosted, and it was declining. There were several neighbors who approached the mayor requesting the buzzards and this tree be removed. But this didn’t happen, and tree finally collapsed into the ravine. More buzzards continued to arrive each fall to an enlarging roost area.”
Neighbors continued to urge the city to do something. An Arkansas Game & Fish agent began to use a sound cannon.
“These booming noises would startle the birds and dislocate them,” Fischer said. “I objected to that because this would happen well after dusk long after they had roosted. I suggested that the cannon program lacked an effective management plan and needed to start daily, in the late afternoon in fall, to disrupt pre-roosting activity. The cannon booms ceased, and that’s the last public intervention activity in many years now.”
Fischer’s observation is that the damage to the forest is dramatic; the dormant tree limbs are stressed by the overload of dense roosting, and the concentrated waste changes the metabolism of the soil. He can’t imagine that the concentrated organic matter of this volume of waste does not impact groundwater quality.
“When we first came here, the kettling behavior (birds circling in the area in groups) was largely confined to the Dairy Hollow and Harmon Park area,” Fischer said. “Rarely did I see it in the central part of city like it is now. We are seeing an obvious shift in the habitat pattern.”
Fischer would appreciate an urban ecology study of the situation. While most of the vultures leave in March, there is a small, year-round resident population of turkey vultures. Is the resident population growing?
Many cities have cultivated buzzard viewing facilities.
“Could we perhaps optimize this situation?” he asked. “How can we benefit or engage with their presence? Native American mythology informs us with the belief that buzzards flying over the land created the valleys and mountains. The buzzards have been part of our landscape’s genesis. Who are we? Maybe we’re just the new kids on the block.”