How Plastic Birds Are Bringing Crested Terns Back From the Brink
One man, 300 decoys, and a pair of speakers on a barren island in the East China Sea may just save this critically endangered bird.
Tiedun Dao, a tiny, barren island off the coast of eastern China, isn鈥檛 the sort of place you鈥檇 want to be during a typhoon鈥攖he island doesn鈥檛 have so much as a shack for shelter. But in the summer of 2014, when Simba Chan found himself on Tiedun Dao as a storm bore down, he couldn鈥檛 bring himself to leave. Chan, a senior conservation officer with BirdLife International, had important charges to protect: a newly established colony of critically endangered .
For more than 40 years the Chinese Crested Tern was believed to be extinct, a victim of rampant egg poaching. Then, in the early 2000s, two small colonies were discovered. 鈥淭his was like rediscovering the Ivory-billed Woodpecker,鈥 says Steve Kress, 爆料公社鈥檚 vice president for bird conservation, who in the 1970s spearheaded the revival of an Atlantic Puffin colony off the coast of Maine. 鈥淎nd what do you do when you rediscover something? You have to be really careful, and have a plan to reduce the risks while you rebuild the population.鈥
In 2011 a coalition of conservationists from BirdLife, the, and several other organizations got together to devise a plan for providing the seabirds with a safe place to breed. The terns needed a new colony, somewhere isolated, and Tiedun Dao was perfect. But first the scientists had to get the birds to land. So they turned to a conservation technique that Kress pioneered back in the 1970s called 鈥渟ocial attraction,鈥 which lures birds by using fake breeding colonies鈥攊n this case, 300 plastic terns and canned tern calls broadcast from speakers. It didn鈥檛 take long for the real birds to show up鈥19 Chinese Crested Terns settled in during the first season, in 2013. Chan became their warden, camping out in a tent and relying on shipments of food and water as he braved that typhoon (all the chicks survived), scared off a would-be egg poacher (he was picked up by authorities while fleeing), and studied the chicks as they grew.
Two years in, the scientists have seen the Crested Tern population on Tiedun Dao swell to more than 50 birds, with more chicks every year鈥攁 record-breaking 16 hatchlings survived this breeding season. Now the scientists are hoping to drum up enthusiasm for protecting the terns in their suspected wintering ground of Indonesia, and they鈥檙e considering establishing additional colonies.
As for Chan, he doesn鈥檛 know if he鈥檒l be back next season. But if he does hand over stewardship of the island, he may end up leaving a legacy for those who come after him: He鈥檚 lobbying for a hut.