The pop band Ocean Park Standoff had a hit a couple years ago called “Good News.” It didn’t quite make the top ten, but topped Amazon’s list of the most requested song lyrics that year. Maybe that’s because the words ring so true to so many people these days: “I need some good news, baby – Feels like the world’s gone crazy – Give me some good news, baby…”
There is a fascinating shore bird called the least tern that is happy to oblige. In fact, the bird’s astonishing recovery is among the great success stories in the history of conservation. More specifically, the “interior least tern,” so called because it inhabits rivers far away from the seashore. Beachgoers have always enjoyed watching terns, because of their manic flight pattern and rapid wing flapping. Some shore birds soar or glide, but terns flutter, almost moth-like, before suddenly diving into the water and coming up with smelt, perch, anchovy, and other small fish. Least terns inhabit the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Atlantic Seaboard. They migrate south for the winter, to Central and South America. The “interior” subspecies once thrived along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers and their tributaries, including the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers all the way to Colorado. They are smaller than a seagull, and have gray backs, white bellies, and black caps.
The interior least tern almost disappeared from the landscape by the time it was added to the federal endangered species list in 1985. One reason was that they don’t hide their nests, but foolishly build them right out on open beaches, sand and gravel bars where any predator can readily find them. Their main salvation was that both the eggs and the chicks look a lot like sand and gravel, a common form of camouflage in nature. Even so, numerous ground-nesting bird species have gone extinct because of predators eating their eggs. However, interior least terns had one additional defense, back in the days when rivers ran freely and flooded often. The sand bars were often surrounded by water on all sides, so many predators could not reach their nests.
The modern era changed that, as many major rivers were contained by levees and dikes, and rechanneled to prevent flooding. Devastating floods along the Mississippi and its tributaries cost lives and destroyed crops for decades before government flood control projects finally began to control the rivers – and stop the very cycles that protected the interior least tern. By 1985 there were perhaps fewer than 1,000 of the birds left, and only a few dozen nesting sites.
The Army Corps of Engineers was given the task of protecting interior least tern nesting sites, along with several fish species affected by the changes in river flows, and the result has been miraculous. Changes to river structures allowed more of the original flooding cycles, and the interior least tern population grew to more than 18,000, with almost 500 known nesting sites in 18 states across the Great Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley. Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska spent 30 years actively protecting habitat and became vital partners in the recovery. The effort also included dozens of regional government offices, 15 other states, and numerous non-profit groups, industries, and universities. At least 30 separate groups got involved in monitoring the birds. On January 12, the federal government officially removed the interior least tern from the endangered list, something that almost never happens.
The birds are once again common in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. They still nest on the ground along major rivers, but also have discovered useful sites at reservoirs, gravel pits, industrial sites, and even nearby rooftops.
Even the politics of this success story are different than usual. Normally, when an administration decides to de-list any species, they immediately get sued by environmental groups. But this effort involved so many of those groups that even one of the most litigious, the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed pride at this achievement.
I am proud of Colorado’s role, though I wish the delisting hadn’t taken so long. The American Bird Conservancy, which was instrumental to the effort, completed its first comprehensive population survey of the birds in 2006, showing that tern populations had reached or exceeded the goals in the government’s recovery plan. Now, albeit 14 years later, the government finally acted, giving the conservation world some badly needed good news.
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