Let’s start with the bad news. Current conservation practices likely won’t do enough to save the black tern, a migratory bird species that nests in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, from disappearing.
Let’s start with the bad news. Current conservation practices likely won’t do enough to save the black tern, a migratory bird species that nests in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, from disappearing.
That’s according to new research from Michigan State University and the National Audubon Society published in the journal Biological Conservation. But there’s also good news.
The team’s report reveals new opportunities to enhance the outlook for these birds by strategically expanding conservation and land management practices that can be used by landowners and agencies such as the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Furthermore, the team’s approach can be adapted to inform conservation practices for other species.
Currently, black tern conservation efforts are focused on maintaining and restoring the bird’s breeding habitat to ensure there’s a place for the next generation to take flight. It’s a sensible approach, but it also relies on adults surviving their migratory and overwintering periods.
As the team showed, that survival can’t be taken for granted.
“What’s going on outside the breeding season and away from the breeding grounds is really important for this bird and, likely, other migratory species,” said Kayla Davis, first author of the new report and a doctoral student in the College of Natural Science at MSU. “There are things we can do to protect stopover and overwintering areas to increase adult survival.”
“Fortunately, Audubon’s network of members and centers allows us to have an expansive conservation reach,” said Sarah Saunders, co-author of the study and senior manager of quantitative science at the National Audubon Society. “Thanks to this work, now we know where to target efforts to help recover this species more effectively.”
Between 1966 and 2019, the population of black terns across North America dropped by more than 2% every year, according to estimates from the North American Breeding Bird Survey. When looking at populations in Michigan, the drop is more than 7% annually.
People knew the bird was vanishing, but prior to this collaboration between MSU and Audubon, researchers faced challenges developing reliable projections for how the black tern population would respond to different conservation strategies.
Those challenges were largely rooted in how hard it is to observe the birds, Davis said.
