How Newfoundland puffins helped save the bird’s population in Maine | 24CA News

The Atlantic puffin inhabitants in Maine is pretty steady as we speak. But as not too long ago because the Seventies, looking had made the seabird almost non-existent within the state.

Only 70 or so pairs lived on Matinicus Rock on the time, roughly 40 kilometres off the Maine coast.

“They used to breed on at least five other islands in Maine, but had not recolonized any of those islands on their own in about 100 years,” mentioned Steve Kress, former govt director of the Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute.

Kress, who first encountered the seabirds on Machias Seal Island in New Brunswick, partnered with the non-profit National Audubon Society to launch Project Puffin on July 4, 1973 — simply over 50 years in the past.

Over the subsequent decade and a half, they transported nearly 2,000 puffin chicks from Newfoundland to 2 historic breeding websites on Maine: Eastern Egg Rock Island and Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge.

“The idea was to hope that young puffins could be moved when they’re just a few days old and they could be transferred from a large colony to a historic site,” Kress instructed The Current visitor host Robyn Bresnahan.

WATCH: Atlantic puffins loafing in Maine

50 years later, on the venture’s anniversary, their efforts are paying off. The puffin inhabitants in Maine has elevated tenfold since 1973 — and so they’re even colonizing new components of the state, in accordance with Don Lyons, director of Conservation Science at Audubon’s Seabird Institute.

“They’re well on their way through the breeding season,” he instructed Bresnahan. “They’ve been incubating eggs and many have had those eggs hatch into the young chicks.”

Acting on a hunch

When Kress began the venture, he mentioned there have been “significant gaps” within the scientific information of puffins, comparable to what age they breed.

What was recognized, although, was that puffins might bear in mind their hatching place — and so they typically returned there after they have been sufficiently old to breed.

That acquired Kress pondering: if puffin chicks have been transported from Newfoundland to Maine, would they bear in mind the websites on Maine the place they have been dropped off as their new breeding floor?

“That was just a hunch … but I thought it was worth a try,” he mentioned.

Kress was in awe the primary time he noticed the puffin inhabitants in Canada.

“For someone who was just amazed to see even a single puffin, to go to Newfoundland where there was, like, hundreds of thousands of puffins in colonies was just awesome,” he mentioned.

But the transportation concerned a number of trial and error.

“We had to invent every step of the way because nobody had started a puffin colony before — or any kind of seabird colony before,” he mentioned.

Kress mentioned they have been initially transported in hole juice cans inside wood packing containers, with burlap doorways to offer them as a lot air flow as doable. Up to 200 chicks have been flown on a non-public jet to Maine every spherical.

The subsequent step was constructing burrows to permit the puffins to breed. It took a number of trials, however by the venture’s third 12 months, “we came up with an excellent burrow — built out of sod, L-shaped like a natural burrow,” he mentioned.

Once that was carried out, the ready began. The first puffin returned to the relocation space inside 4 years. The first chook carrying fish was noticed in 1981, “which meant that we had a chick,” Kress mentioned.

Social attraction

At one level, Kress was involved by the shortage of puffins returning to the relocation space. So to fight this, Kress pioneered a brand new conservation technique utilizing social attraction — primarily based on the concept that puffins choose to nest in teams.

“Maybe these puffins were just nervous about coming ashore,” he mentioned. “Maybe they were flying nearby but not seeing other puffins, [so] they would just venture on other puffin colonies.”

To encourage puffin migration to the Maine launch websites, Kress and his crew put up two varieties of decoys designed to seem like puffins.

The concept was that if a passing puffin that was able to nest noticed the decoys, they’d be extra comfy to nest on the discharge websites.

Kress’s hunch was right, and inside a number of years, there have been indicators that birds have been nesting within the new puffin colony.

Conservation heroes

Biologist Ian Jones says seabirds are amongst the world’s most endangered animals, so conservation efforts like Project Puffin are “fantastically important” to their survival and to normal scientific information.

“If there was a Nobel Prize for bird conservation or even for conservation, you know, Steve would be a candidate I would nominate,” the Memorial University of Newfoundland professor instructed Bresnahan.

Despite their development, Jones mentioned that rising temperatures within the jap Atlantic, “so around the British Isles, Norway, the Faroes and Iceland,” might threaten the puffin inhabitants throughout the subsequent 50 years.

“There’s definitely some very worrying signs that the water is simply getting too hot to support the puffin’s prey and the puffin populations,” he mentioned.

Still, he mentioned the Atlantic puffins are doing comparatively effectively in comparison with different seabird species, “and so that’s cause for hope.”

In the meantime, Audubon continues to watch Maine’s puffin inhabitants, utilizing varied publicly-broadcast cameras to review and be taught from their habits.

The decoys are additionally nonetheless used on the islands as we speak, and Lyons mentioned the social attraction conservation method has been tailored by different seabird conservation efforts all over the world.

“A team of us, Steve and I with a bunch of collaborators, have recently compiled all of the projects that we’re able to learn of around the world,” he mentioned. 

“It’s over 800 efforts that have now used these techniques of translocation and social attraction, and they’ve benefited around one-third of all the seabird species in the world.”