Snake River Sanctuary Canyon Offers Abundance Of Flying Predators

An hour out of Boise, the canyon of the Snake River is a wild, windy escarpment of volcanic basalts, with fast moving clouds creating ever-changing shadow patterns over the distant Owyhee Mountains.

Clouds are not the only rapidly moving objects in the sky. Two red-tailed hawks perform a courtship sky dance, doing aerial loops and on occasion locking talons.

A prairie falcon circles lazily above the canyon rim, then shoots to earth. An estimated 200 pairs nest in the canyon each spring and can divebomb prey at a hundred miles an hour to make a kill and feed their ravenous young.

Welcome to Dedication Point, many visitors’ first stop in Idaho’s 482,000-acre Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area. The sanctuary, run by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, boasts a concentration of falcons, hawks, eagles, owls and vultures more dense than anyplace else in the world.

Each spring, the birds arrive from as far distant as Argentina. They mate, lay eggs, raise their young. With the onset of summer heat - usually in early June - the raptors sensibly fly off to cooler, higher hunting areas.

The hawks, falcons and eagles spend their time hunting, to feed themselves and their young. “From the day a prairie falcon hatches until it is gone is 45 days,” said Larry Ridenhour, park ranger with the Bureau of Land Management. “They reach a full size in that time span, so you can appreciate the parents’ job.”

The raptor sanctuary was originally an idea of Morley Nelson, a retired Bureau of Land Management guide. On a windy spring day more than a quarter-century ago, he stood on the canyon rim with Idaho’s then-Gov. Cecil Andrus and tossed a China pheasant into the air. A peregrine falcon shot out of the sky and killed the pheasant in a milisecond, retracting one foot while extending the other to break the neck of its prey.

Andrus never forgot the experience. The Nixon administration was cajoled into creating a narrow, 27,000-acre sanctuary along 81 miles of the Snake River south and east of Boise.

“OK, you’ve protected the bedroom. What are you going to do to preserve the pantry?” Andrus asked Interior Secretary Rogers Morton, when Morton came to dedicate the small sanctuary.

Andrus was able to answer his own question when he served as Interior secretary in the Carter administration. In 1980, weeks before the Reagan administration took office, he withdrew more than 450,000 acres of federal land, on both sides of the canyon, from agricultural development.

The land can still be used for grazing, and National Guard training exercises are still held there each summer, after many of the birds have departed. It just cannot be plowed under, because that would break the food chain that sustains the raptors.

The “pantry” supports winterfar (white-sage), a plant that provides food and cover for the Townsend ground squirrel. The squirrels, which give birth to their young in mid-March, are prime food for prairie falcons.

Sagebrush near the canyon is the favored habitat of jack rabbits. The rabbits breed in the late winter and spring, exactly when golden eagles need food for their young. About 30 pairs of eagles inhabit rocky cliffs of the canyon.

A visitor to Birds of Prey should come armed with binoculars and spotting scopes, as well as the best telephoto lenses in the camera kit.

The environment of the canyon is high desert, although one of the Northwest’s master rivers flows through it. Bring sunglasses, sun hats and water bottles along with a jacket to ward off stiff, cool winds. Wear long pants and boots, since another of the raptors’ favorite foods - the western rattlesnake - makes its home here.

Dedication Point is about 15 miles south of Kuna along a paved road. A few miles to the south, the road makes a steep descent to 95-year-old Swan Falls Dam, oldest on the Snake River. The visitor can walk across the top of the dam, or (preferably) hike along the marshes below.

A second route into the Birds of Prey area is a few miles to the west, reached by going west on Kuna Road, and then south on Robinson and CanAda roads. The route isn’t completely paved, but bumps will be forgotten upon reaching Celebration Park by the river.

It is a spectacular place for eagle watching; four nests used by the big birds sit in cliffs above the river, and another is found nearby on Walters Butte. A historic, 100-year-old railroad bridge has been converted to pedestrian use.

Of greatest interest, however, is the fascinating array of Indian petroglyphs, some more than 10,000 years old. The rock art is presided over by an enthusiastic, vastly knowledgeable Canyon County parks official named Tom Bicak, who has educated thousands of Idaho schoolchildren on the aboriginal inhabitants who once fished and hunted in the canyon.

Before visiting the conservation area, there is a mandatory stop to make just outside of Boise. It is the World Center for Birds of Prey, run by a private non-profit international organization - The Peregrine Fund - that propagates predatory birds in captivity and then releases them in the wild.

The fund has released more than 4,000 peregrine falcons in 28 states since the mid-1970s, reestablishing a once-imperiled species from one end of the United States to the other.

The reintroduction of peregrines is nearly completed. The center is, however, also propagating California condors as well as aplomado falcons and harpy eagles. The harpy, which inhabits tropical forests of Central and South America, is the most powerful bird of prey in the Western Hemisphere.

The center features extraordinary exhibits. It is a particularly rewarding place to take nature-curious young people. Visitors can look close up at California condors and harpy eagles through one-way glass. Tour guides lift a well-trained peregrine falcon and explain her hunting features. Exhibits map the birds’ continent-spanning migration patterns, and match various species of owls with the sounds they make.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO: To plan a visit to the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, contact Larry Ridenhour at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 3948 Development Ave., Boise ID 83705. Or call him at (208) 384-3334. The bureau publishes a visitor guide to the conservation area, along with a raptor identification leaflet. The World Center for Birds of Prey, run by The Peregrine Fund, is at 5666 West Flying Hawk Lane, Boise, ID 83709; (208) 362-8687. Its Web site, worth a visit, is at: http//www.peregrinefund.org The center is open 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday. Tours are continuous. The center is reached by taking Exit 50A off Interstate 84 and heading six miles down South Cole Road.