California is home to a number tern species, including the near threatened Elegant Tern and the endangered California Least Tern. These birds nest and forage along the Pacific Coast, utilizing a largely human-altered landscape. Ports in particular not only offer calm waters and shelter for boats and ships, but for seabirds such as terns as well. These locations consequently become hotspots for potentially hazardous human-wildlife interactions.
International Bird Rescue leads a multi-organizational task force working to conserve tern species that utilize Southern California ports as critical habitats. This collaborative effort was born from a 2021 wildlife emergency in which Bird Rescue, along with 10 partnering organizations, responded to save thousands of Elegant Tern chicks from drowning.
In the summer of 2021, a catastrophic abandonment of an Elegant Terns nesting site at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve resulted in thousands of the terns re-nesting on a moored barge within the Port of Long Beach. Overcrowding in combination with the edgeless barge made this a hazardous location for newly hatched chicks. The too-young-to-fly terns would wander off the sides of the barge, fall into the water, and then be unable to return to the safety of the barge. Bird Rescue worked tirelessly alongside partner organizations to rescue, rehabilitate, and release hundreds of these Elegant Terns. To read more, please visit our blog post about this event.
This event, in addition to similar events affecting Elegant and Caspian Terns in 2006 and 2007, sparked the creation of an Elegant Tern Task Force. This group combines the expertise of Bird Rescue and specialists from many disciplines including scientists, government agencies, non-profit organizations, local Audubon societies, industry, barge operators, port contractors, and port leaders. The Task Force’s primary goals are to: (1) continue and increase the conservation of tern species, (2) build partnerships with port leaders to provide support and resources to prevent future wildlife emergencies and (3) research new and improved mitigation strategies.
The Elegant Tern Task Force was created in the fall of 2021 and is currently focused on local port partnerships and tern species (Elegant, Caspian, Least Terns) within the Port of Long Beach and Port of Los Angeles. In time, we aim to broaden the scope to include additional ports and tern species.
One of the first major accomplishments of the task force has been creating a port best practices document for mitigating nesting terns, which provides port leaders with guidance and resources from tern and port experts alike.