Conservation law drives downtown wild

Who says Nashua doesn’t have any wildlife?

Not Tammy Clegg, who spotted a red-tailed hawk devouring a seagull in the parking lot of TD Banknorth in Nashua and took a few photos with her camera.

Meat-eating birds such as hawks, collectively known as raptors, are doing pretty well in New Hampshire. Last year, bald eagles and peregrine falcons were reclassified from “endangered” to merely “threatened” on the list of species living in New Hampshire, while ospreys and the Cooper’s hawk were deemed no longer even be threatened.

The improvement is caused by a number of changes, including the federal ban on the pesticide DDT in 1972, partly because it made eggshells so thin that fewer chicks hatched; programs in

which wild raptors were captured elsewhere and resettled here; and the construction of nesting areas and preservation of breeding grounds.provement is good for the environment – unless you’re a seagull, that is.