15 Canada Geese Land in La Brea Tar Pits, Severe Burns Kill 13

(Photo : Mario Tama / Getty Images)
13 Canada geese died after they landed in the La Brea Tar Pits.

On July 31, a flock of Canada Geese landed in the La Brea Tar Pits, where 13 of the 15 birds perished.

La Brea Tar Pits and 15 Canada Geese

The birds sustained severe wounds.

Seven of the 15 geese who flew into the pit could be saved, and six made it to Bird Rescue's Los Angeles Wildlife Center where they will receive additional care.

The assistant curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, Dr. Regan Dunn, voiced his dismay at seeing creatures become trapped for the first time.

He continued, saying that the incident has only happened a handful of times since the museum first opened, but has never happened on this scale.

According to officials, rescuing animals that have fallen into Lake Pit is not only challenging but also risky.

To remove the geese from the tar, they alerted Los Angeles Animal Services as soon as they were spotted.

Two of the evacuated geese are still healing at the center, but sadly, the other five passed very shortly after arriving.

One of them is seriously injured.

According to Rebecca Duerr, the International Bird Rescue director of research and veterinarian science, this asphalt produces skin burns in birds, and they can be quite severe.

This is similar to how many crude oils induce skin burns in animals.

It was bare bones in the case of this bird. Duerr ultimately performed a skin graft on that bird, the results of which are yet to be seen.

60,000 Years of Wildlife in Tar Pits

Animals do occasionally become stuck in the tar, according to Dunn, though this particular circumstance is uncommon.

She claimed that to prevent it from happening frequently, a fence surrounds the Lake Pit.

Conservation is one of the key priorities at the La Brea Tar Pits and the National History Museums, according to Dunn. They are therefore deeply worried about these concerns.

According to officials, animals have been falling into the tar pit in this location for more than 60,000 years. Even if people were able to respond quickly to rescue as many lives as they could, it doesn't make the tragedy any less tragic.

The countless amounts of fossilized plant and animal remains discovered at the La Brea Tar Pits depict the evolution of the Los Angeles Basin over the previous 60,000 years.

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In particular, the quantity of bird bones found in Rancho La Brea is significant.

Because of the asphalt, the tar pits feature one of the greatest collections of fossilized birds in the world, with many more still to be identified.

Two new species of tiny owls are described from Rancho La Brea, California's upper Pleistocene asphalt layers in 2012.

These two extinct owls are among the nine strigiform species discovered in Rancho La Brea that have been described.

It supports the idea that southwest coastal California was similar to an island in the late Pleistocene because one of them, the new species of Glaucidium, was also identified from the upper Pleistocene asphalt layers of Carpinteria, California.

With the inclusion of these two, Rancho La Brea's known extinct bird species now number 22.

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