outdoors

The Snail Kite (Elanio Caracolero in Spanish) was not all that common in Panama, inhabiting wetlands when you could find it at all. But then under the former US canal administration snails were introduced into Gatun Lake to eat the water weeds that have long been a Panama Canal maintenance nuisance. These raptors, though not French, just love to eat snails. They multiplied as their new prey did likewise.

The raising of Gatun Lake's level for the Panama Canal expansion and the construction of a new toll road between Panama City and Colon will affect areas where Snail Kites live, but probably just marginally. But will the expanded canal bring new organisms into Gatun Lake, and what effect might these have on the snails and the kites that eat them? Those kinds of environmental questions are always hard to answer, and when the effect is undesirable it's usually to late to do much about it by the time the problem is discovered.

Gatun Lake is, of course, an artificial ecosystem created by the damming of the Chagres River and affected by countless exotic species introductions --- most of them unintentional. The lake used to be a fabulous recreational resource that was managed for residents of the former Canal Zone but the current canal management has abandoned and suppressed such uses and allowed the ecosystem to go unmanaged.