Reward offered in cases of slashed California pelicans

Associated Press
Thursday, Dec. 24, 2020 6:45 p.m. | Thursday, Dec. 24, 2020 6:45 p.m.

In this Saturday, May 15, 2010 photo, veterinarian Erica Miller, Heather Nevill, and Danene Birtell clean a brown pelican at the Fort Jackson Wildlife Rehabilitation Center at Buras, La. The bird was rescued after being being oiled in an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform over three weeks earlier.

LOS ANGELES — A $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the conviction of whoever is slashing the pouches and necks of brown pelicans on the Southern California coast.

International Bird Rescue posted the reward after four pelicans with identical, severe injuries were brought in for care at its facility in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles.

Three of the birds were brought in from Marina del Rey in Los Angeles County and the fourth was rescued at Ventura Harbor in Ventura County. The organization noted that a pelican with similar injuries was brought in from Ventura Harbor in the fall of 2019.

International Bird Rescue said in a statement this week that the injuries are different than the hundreds of pelican pouch injuries seen by staff veterinarian Rebecca Duerr.

Most injuries are caused by fish hooks, boat propeller strikes of those or similar accidents, but the apparently deliberately injured birds have straight cuts through both sides of the pouch, it said.

The most recent wounded bird had to be euthanized.