If daredevil Nik Wallenda hasn't encountered enough problems in his quest to cross Niagara Falls on a wire, how about possible charges under the Endangered Species Act.
Anne Yagi from the province's Ministry of Natural Resources arrived at the Falls this afternoon. She, along with counterparts in the U.S., will be playing the role of personal attachés to a pair of rare peregrine falcons and their four hatchlings.
The birds are nesting in the window of a closed Ontario Power Generation Station in the Niagara Gorge, about 200 metres below where Wallenda will walk. The wire is strung up in the airspace the birds use to hunt for food.
“We did not approve this,” says Yagi of the MNR's position on the walk. The biologist says she spoke with Wallenda and asked him to postpone his stunt until September, when nesting season is over, but he decided to go ahead with it.
Yagi says she’s concerned the birds could fly into a wire and get hurt. Or that they could be so preoccupied with defending their airspace that they ignore their young. They could also attack the funambulist during his walk.
At 8 p.m. tonight Yagi will be escorted down into the gorge to monitor the birds. She'll have a scope and will be taking pictures and notes to use as evidence for charges if any of the birds are hurt. New York State park biologists will be doing the same thing on the other side.
“It's unprecedented, we don't know for sure how (the birds) are going to react,” she says.
Yagi says that when she explained to Wallenda that the birds could attack him, the stuntman responded by saying his parents often threw objects at him when he was training and he still stayed on the wire.
“Just because they're small doesn't mean they don't hit with force,” she says of the two-and-a-half-pound birds that can reach speeds of 360 kilometres per hour.
Mark Nash of the Canadian peregrine foundation says if the two adult birds react, it will likely be one of three ways:
They could fly around and scream at the dare devil, swoop and strike him repeatedly or, they could also attach themselves to him and bite and scratch with their talons.
“Have you ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s the birds?” he asks.
The female adult falcon is named Diamond and the male, Onyx. We'll be updating you on their status.
ALSO FROM THE WEB:
Click here to read our live blog of today’s event
Nik Wallenda’s Niagara Falls walk: The rescue plan
Niagara Falls walk draws an early crowdE
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