Though sometimes obscure, the struggle of the California Clapper Rail is decidedly real. Many people don’t know that the California Clapper Rail, or Ridgway’s Rail, is a prime example of the victims of habitat destruction in the bay. Though driven to the brink of extinction by the miners of the Gold Rush, the Rails have been coming back lately and their numbers are recovering. However their progress to normalcy as a species is disrupted by the various factors, including non-native predators, a plant called Spartina, and destroyed habitats. The Rails’ disappearance is impacting the food chain and other native animals’ lives. Background
California clapper rails have been endangered for quite a while. Their current state is mostly caused by …show more content…
The number of Ridgway's Rails, or so-called California Clapper Rails, had been declining first from 1848 to 1884 (States 1), when the human population in California suddenly increased because the discovery of gold by James Marshall, or the Gold Rush. Soon, “the natural resources of Northern California were quickly depleted – thousands of acres of forests were cut down for development, waterways were contaminated with waste, and fish and other animals were over-harvested” (Krieg 1) not long after these settlers arrived in California. Including Ridgway's Rail, thousands of them at that time were killed and hunted down as food for these gold diggers and market hunters since these rails tasted a lot like chicken. According to the Jack States, a specialist who deals with habitat restoration, he mentions that, “... [Ridgway’s] rail became a delicacy served up to people living in San Francisco” (States 2) during the Gold Rush and the hunters and gold diggers did not worry about whether if their actions will cause the rail to be endangered since “with hundreds of thousands of acres of marshland ringing the bay[, they think] there were no shortage of clapper rails to go around” (States 2). Not long, the number of California clapper rail dropped below 500 birds and was declared as an endangered species in 1913 “due to decades of overhunting and the loss of over 90% of marshland habitat to urban development, salt production, and agriculture” (Krieg 1). The decrease of the population of the rail temporarily stopped with the appearance of the Week-McLean law, or the Lacey Act, which was passed in 1913. This act is passed “to stop commercial market hunting and illegal shipment of migratory bird from one state to another” (California Clapper Rail 1) in response to the sudden drop of the population of California Clapper Rails during the Gold Rush. Now, the Lacey Act, which is changed to Endangered Species Act recently, continues to