Summary: The Pelican Brief

John Grisham, an author from Arkansas, wrote a book called The Pelican Brief. John doesn’t just view his books as books. He views them as entertainment for everyone else. In The Pelican Brief, John shows how the brown pelican stirs conflict in court and leads to the murders of two Supreme Court Justices who both agree on one topic: the environment. The brown pelican is a “gull-like” bird that usually tops out around 11 pounds (Brown Pelican). These birds have multicolored streaks of brown, yellow, gray, and white with a long, bowed wingspan. Their necks are quite expandable to hold many fish at once. Inhabiting the southern and western sea coasts, they are rarely seen inland. At one time these great pelicans were threatened in their environment though. DDT was a pesticide used to eliminate insects, so that diseases such as malaria wouldn’t be passed so easily. In the 1960s and early 70s, there was an uprising brought by the environmentalists. They realized that DDT was threatening the brown pelicans by thinning their eggs. These thinned eggs were easily crushed by the mother, resulting in a lack of newborn chicks. The brown pelican population took a huge dip and they officially became considered endangered. Therefore in 1970 the pesticide DDT was banned. After the ban the population evened out and grew closer to its old population.
There are ways that you can support the cause. Many reserves and organizations are being set up to help with their starvation and for places to breed (Brown Pelican). Even though actions are being done to help these birds, they are not completely safe from harm. If the starvation continues they will be forced to be listed as endangered by the U.S. Wildlife Service (Williams). These are beautiful birds that have been around for so long. Finding a solution to their problem is an action we need to