Heroes of Hawk Mountain: Tom Cade
Posted on in Heroes of Hawk Mountain by Mary Linkevich, Director of Development
The raptor conservation community mourned the loss of Dr. Tom Cade earlier this year. Dr. Cade is not just a Hawk Mountain Hero, but a hero for the entire field of raptor conservation. It was an honor and a privilege to thank him personally for his many contributions by presenting him in 2008 with Hawk Mountain’s Sarkis Acopian Award for Excellence in Raptor Conservation.
Simply put, the man was a legend. Dr. Cade was an ornithology professor at Cornell University when in 1970 he co-founded The Peregrine Fund in response to the near extinction of peregrines in the United States. At the time, there were no peregrines east of the Mississippi and only a handful in the West.
The culprit behind their decline was DDT, a pesticide that had been in widespread use since the 1940’s and caused eggshell thinning, leading to eggs breaking in the nest. When too few chicks hatched, peregrine populations crashed by up to 90 percent.
What followed is considered the largest and most organized effort in history to prevent the loss of a species and restore its population.At the time, most experts thought it impossible to breed captive birds of prey on a large scale, but under Cade’s leadership, a Dream Team essentially changed the course of extinction. The team was extensive and included falconers who had experience in raising the raptors, biologists who studied them, and volunteers, students and others who understood the implications of losing a species.
From 1974 to 1997, The Peregrine Fund bred and released into the wild more than 4,000 falcons and, in 1999, the peregrine was removed from the federal endangered species list. Dr. Cade’s pioneering work led to other breakthroughs in the field of endangered species research, and his techniques were later used on bald eagles, California condors, harpy eagles, and other species.Today The Peregrine Fund works on six continents and in more than 55 countries, leading and coordinating numerous conservation efforts globally, and Dr. Cade’s contributions are recognized worldwide.
Dr. Cade’s lifetime of work in raptor conservation and recovery left a permanent legacy for raptor biologists and enthusiasts across North America and beyond. The autumn flights of peregrines enjoyed by countless Hawk Mountain visitors,year after year, are a direct result of his foresight and hard work.
Click here to learn more about his work.