For the first time in nearly 70 years, a pair of peregrine falcon chicks has been seen hatching on Santa Barbara Island, scientists said Friday.

The discovery was made April 19 by Brian Latta, a field biologist from the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Group, during a survey of peregrine falcons on all eight of the Channel Islands.

Two chicks and one hatching egg found in the nest. Courtesy photo by Brian Latta, Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group

“I climbed to the eyrie, hoping to recover an unhatched egg we could use for contaminant analysis,” Latta said. “Imagine my surprise to find two recently hatched young and another beginning to hatch! In all likelihood, there should be three chicks there now.”

Peregrine falcons, a species on the California endangered species list, disappeared from the Channel Islands in the 1940s and 50s because they were indirectly ingesting DDT, a pesticide that was used to fight mosquitoes and insect-borne diseases, beginning in World War II.

DDT has since been banned, but about 1,800 tons of it made its way into the sewers of Los Angeles. From there, it wound up in the mud of the ocean floor off the Palos Verdes peninsula, where the city’s wastewater pipeline emptied into the ocean. It is still awaiting cleanup.

Biologists found the nest on this Santa Barbara Island cliff. Courtesy photo by Andrew Grant, Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group

The successful hatching on Santa Barbara Island this year may be due to the dryness of the winter season, Latta said. Less DDT may have gotten into the environment because there was less runoff and ocean upwelling, he said.

Milena Viljoen, the outreach coordinator for the federal and state agencies that are managing the $250,000 falcon restoration program, said last week’s discovery on Santa Barbara Island was exciting news.

“It means the population is spreading and reestablishing itself in its historic home on the islands,” she said.

The peregrine falcon was one of the first species to be placed on the federal endangered species list in the 1970s. The bird recovered and was removed from the national list in 1999, but it is still rare in California — especially in the Channel Islands, where the falcons eat a higher proportion of seabirds than on the mainland.

“The Channel Islands birds continue to have difficulty with reproduction,” Latta said. “A number of pairs fail every year. The eggs are thin and break a couple of weeks into incubation.”

Biologists with the bird group began placing pairs of falcons on the islands in the late 1970s. In 1995, they placed a pair on Santa Barbara Island, the most remote of five islands in the Channel Islands National Park.

Last year, it was impossible to reach the nest on Santa Barbara Island because California brown pelicans had built their nests on the trail from the harbor, Latta said. But it's unlikely any falcon chicks hatched last year, he said, or they would have been reported by scientists studying seabirds there.

There are 30 pairs of peregrine falcons on the eight Channel Islands today, probably the offspring of the first birds that were released or of birds that hatched in the wild, Latta said. That’s out of a total 250 pairs of falcons statewide.

Funding for the peregrine falcon survey comes from a $140 million court settlement reached in 2001 between six federal and state agencies and the Montrose Chemical Plant and other companies that discharged DDT into the sewers of Los Angeles. Montrose also dumped DDT-contaminated sludge into the ocean near Santa Catalina Island. A total of $30 million has been set aside for restoration: the rest is for damage assessment and cleanup.