California Brown Pelicans Mutilated in Long Beach Harbor, California

"Mutilation - To deprive a person or animal of a limb or other essential part. To render imperfect by damaging or excising a part."

- American Heritage Dictionary

January 18, 2003  Fairfield, California - Since the 1980s, along the Pacific Coast from Oregon to California, brown pelicans have been found with either their upper beaks cut off or wing bones cut. Holes have also been cut out in some of the birds' food pouches and behind their eyes, without blood. Wildlife experts are puzzled and upset since the California Brown Pelican has been on the Federal Endangered Species list since the 1970s after the pesticide DDT killed off so many of the ocean birds.