Man Sees Salt Lake As Flamingo Haven

SALTAIR, Utah - Long-legged, pink flamingo seeking same to share friendship, food and freedom.

That's the personal classified ad that a lonely flamingo living on the Great Salt Lake may have been thinking about for the last 15 years, said Jim Platt, who has made it his mission to acquire friends for the bird, nicknamed "Pink Floyd."

Since Floyd flew the coop from Salt Lake City's Tracy Aviary, he's been gloriously free, but painfully alone.

His only pals are a pack of seagulls and the tourists that snap his picture. Floyd's become a local legend, appearing frequently in winter as a flash of pink on the otherwise drab horizons of the lake.

"I know what freedom is, and I think Floyd is having that experience," Platt said. "I'd like him to be friends with others who are having that same experience. They could breed and be a wild flock."

Platt, the owner of Dancing Cranes Imports, offered to buy — and release — the remaining flamingos from the aviary for $1,000 each but he was politely turned down. The aviary called the proposition irresponsible and potentially disruptive to the lake's delicate ecosystem.

Floyd is a Chilean flamingo, hailing from high Andes lakes with conditions similar to those at the Great Salt Lake — high salt content, cold winters and hot summers.

Scientists and bird watchers know Floyd is healthy because he's bright pink, from the color of the brine shrimp he eats. Brine shrimp are all that can live in the lake because of its extreme salinity.

Platt is waging a public campaign to get the governor to declare the Great Salt Lake a pink flamingo sanctuary. He hopes every state in the nation will donate a bird.

"It could be America's flamingos on the Great Salt Lake," he said. "It could be a tourist attraction."

Platt recently took out a quarter-page pink ad in a local newspaper asking people to contact the governor in support of the flamingo sanctuary. Nearly 260 people wrote in, 235 of them from an elementary school class that filled an envelope and signed the back, "Friends of Floyd."

Gov. Mike Leavitt hasn't made up his mind yet, said spokeswoman Natalie Gochnour. But he's taking his lead from the state experts, and they're less than enthusiastic.

"I don't think we want to have any chance of them getting started as a breeding species on the Great Salt Lake," said Frank Howe, avian program coordinator for the Division of Wildlife Resources.

"If we could look at having some guarantees that flamingos would not procreate out there, then we might be more amenable to the idea," he said. "But the idea of releasing any wildlife that is not native to the area is courting ecological disaster. We don't want the Great Salt Lake to be a proving ground for that."

Environmentalists cite pigeons, starlings and sparrows — nonnative species that have become pests.

Because Floyd's gender is not known, releasing birds of either gender isn't practical, said Patty Shreve, Tracy Aviary curator. And it's difficult to neuter birds. She stressed that a flamingo flock would overwhelm the natural environment.

Platt said he's not proposing thousands of flamingos, just a few to keep Floyd company. He says the amount of brine shrimp the birds would consume likely won't make much overall difference.

"This is just the way the bureaucracy works," he said, "and bureaucracy doesn't respond well to vision."

There are seven privately owned flamingos in Florida on sale for $7,500 each. While Platt won't endorse it, he said there's no law against surreptitiously buying the flamingos and one day "accidentally" releasing them on behalf of Floyd.

Introduction of exotic species can be adversely disruptive to the local environment, but I can't think of anything that would be harmed by flamingoes. Who knows? Maybe they'd be beneficial as a tourist attraction. And while I don't know if they're tastey or not, perhaps they'd be good game for hunters.

Just the other day, I was tempted to make the same suggestion about hedgehogs. (Hedgehog Rescue Plan Begins in Scotland). They seem to be rather cute and harmless little critters. But I'd be a little more leery about them messing with pheasant eggs.

Thanks for the ping. I hadn't heard about Floyd, the Flamingo. I think it is a great idea to have a flock of flamingos there, except I don't know how big a tourist attraction they would be. Brine shrimp stinks to high heaven, whenever I take friends out there, we spend about five minutes, and then they say "Ewwww" and we go somewhere else. Which is too bad, I can remember floating in the Great Salt Lake when I was a little girl.

3 posted on 03/29/2003 8:01:05 PM PST by Utah Girl ("We must stop evil before it becomes too powerful." - Elie Weisel.)

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