Effort to build up America’s loon population is underway
WINDHAM, MAINE — The common loon’s haunting wail that pierced the dusk on Massachusetts lakes disappeared long ago.
Today, the birds number fewer than 50 pairs in the Bay State, and conservationists are hoping to rebuild their population, starting with a handful of chicks from Maine and New York.
The Restore the Call program at the Biodiversity Research Institute in Portland plans to move 10 chicks to an area south of Boston this summer. David Evers, the institute’s executive director, says restoring an animal population starts out small but he is optimistic.
Loons once lived throughout Massachusetts. Hunting and habitat loss contributed to their decline and they were wiped out by 1898, the last eggs plucked near a lake south of Boston. They began returning in the 1970s, but the state still only has 45 breeding pairs.
“All we need to do is establish one pair,” Evers said. “Once that one pair is established and once that pair produces young, and those young come back, and they start to establish territories, then you’ve got some brooding that can start from that little seed.”
However, common loons can be slow to recover because they don’t breed until they are several years old.
“Loons depend on high-quality habitat without certain types of disturbance,” said Danielle D’Auria, a wildlife biologist with Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
The bird’s range has shrunk throughout the U.S. It has disappeared in Oregon and southern Michigan and parts of Idaho, Montana and Washington. It is a threatened species in New Hampshire, where last year biologists for the Loon Preservation Committee recorded 234 loon chicks hatched and 26 per cent of them did not survive.
In all, researchers count about 14,000 loon pairs in the country.
And while their population remains strong in Canada, where they are a national symbol, the birds face threats of mercury and lead pollution as they do in the U.S.
Maine Audubon, which is helping with the relocation project, says Maine has at least 2,000 pairs of loons and New York has about 1,000. The institute has undertaken similar projects in Minnesota and plans to add Wyoming to the program next year. A US$6.5-million grant from the Ricketts Conservation Foundation funds the loon relocation efforts.
The Institute also relocated seven chicks from New York’s Adirondack area to Massachusetts last year.