Pelican on Upper Klamath Lake

Since 2009, the WFRC has partnered with Real Time Research to study bird predation of suckers. Scientists scan large nesting sites of fish-eating (piscivorous) birds, looking for PIT tags from juvenile and adult suckers that have been eaten by the birds. To date, the research suggests that predation by waterbirds, like American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) and Double-crested Cormorants (Nannopterum auritum), has been a substantial source of sucker deaths in some years, but unlikely the primary source of the decline in sucker populations.