Endangered Bird Species Thriving on Navy Bombing Range

One of the most rare and threatened bird species in North America is thriving in an unlikely and dangerous place: a naval bombing range off the coast of California.

The San Clemente loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus mearnsi) is endemic to San Clemente Island, a 20-mile long, four-mile-wide rocky outcrop in the Pacific Ocean about 60 miles west of San Diego. Since 1934, the island has been operated by various naval commands, which use it as a ship-to-shore bombing range.

Though the island is used in routine military exercises and signs warning of unexploded ordinance and laser-guided bombings offer stark warning of the dangers of the outcrop, it is still open to the public, including researchers, who have observed both decline and surge in the population of the native birds.

Throughout the 1990s the birds lived on the brink of extinction.

According to the Institute for Wildlife Studies, there were 33 individual San Clemente loggerhead shrikes on the island in 1994, by 1998 the population plummeted to just seven breeding pairs. But thanks to conservation efforts that included the introduction of captive-raised birds into the island's wild population, the number of the birds has begun to soar. Today there are at least 140 of the black and white birds on the island, according to a recent Associated Press report.

In a seeming paradox, the same group that's bombing the island assists in the conservation efforts that happen there; the U.S. Navy plays a leading role in protecting the species native to the island.

"If we were to abuse the island, we would lose it," Naval Cmdr. Christopher Kirby, the officer in charge, told the AP.

Navy biologist Melissa Booker said the San Clemente loggerhead shrike "seems to be unaffected by the loud noises."

"We have a role to support the military's mission, and we have a role to protect species. The two things don't have to contradict each other."