A peregrine falcon chick is examined and tagged by biologists and veterinarians just down the road from me in Lansing, Michigan. The bird lives at the Board of Water and Light’s Eckert Power Station. More information and images are here. Image by Rod Sanford/Lansing State Journal. According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources:

The last documented successful nesting in Michigan, before restoration began, was in 1957 at Burnt Bluff, a cliff on the Garden Peninsula in Delta County.

During the 1950s, the world population of peregrines was decimated, mostly due to the use of DDT in pesticides. When DDE, the breakdown product of DDT, accumulates in the bodies of many birds, it causes them to lay very thin-shelled eggs which break during incubation. A repeat of the 1940 survey of historically known eyries, conducted in 1964, found no breeding pairs or even single adult peregrines east of the Mississippi.

By the 1970s, DDT had been banned in both Europe and the U.S., partially due to data linking it to the decline of the peregrine falcon. In 1975, the Eastern Peregrine Recovery Team was created and charged with the task of developing a management plan to restore peregrine falcons as a nesting bird population in the eastern U.S. A program of re-introduction commenced, which has been extremely successful. By 1991, over 3000 falcons had been released throughout the U.S., including 400 in the upper Midwest. At the time restoration began, the population of peregrines in the U.S. was probably down to about 10 percent of its original size.

To date, 139 peregrine falcons have been released in Michigan, including 108 in the Upper Peninsula and 31 in urban areas….

On the Net: The Peregrine Fund
On the Net: Michigan Department of Natural Resources – Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)