– credit, David Kinchin / Smith RSPB
In nothing short of a miracle, a colony of seabirds in England multiplied from 0 to 756 in just 3 years.
As everyone learns in school, 0 times anything is still 0, but these breeding sandwich tern pairs moved into the colony on England’s south coast after the previous population was wiped out by avian flu.
In addition to the sandwich terns, little terns, ringed plovers, black-headed gulls, and oystercatchers have all increased in number thanks to the same conservation work from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds that helped encourage the sandwich terns to repopulate the area.
“In 2022, sandwich terns, black-headed gulls, and Mediterranean gulls were hit severely by HPAI/bird flu, leading to the abandonment of their breeding colony at Pagham harbor,” said Wez Smith, senior project manager for the RSPB.
“It’s taken several years of dedicated conservation action, but the situation began to ‘tern’ around last year, and the site is now thriving with record-breaking populations using it.”
Located between Brighton and Southampton on Britain’s Channel coastline, the Pagham colony was only the keystone in a 128,000-acre stretch of coastal habitat that has been the focus of conservation efforts by RSPB and other volunteers.
The Guardian reported that such efforts involve the establishment of predator-proof fencing to protect ground-nesting birds, monitoring for the presence of rats, and the selective removal of vegetation to encourage nesting behavior.
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“Volunteers and rangers have also carried out patrols to raise awareness among visitors and local people of the vulnerability of ground-nesting birds to disturbance, with dog-friendly exercise areas provided away from the nesting birds,” the outlet added.
All of these areas and exercises are part of the Solent Seascape project—which works to restore multiple habitats across the Solent, a diverse estuarine system between the Isle of Wight and mainland England.
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