Monitors Succeed in Keeping the Crowds Clear of Least Tern Nests

A diligent monitoring program by wildlife experts and environmental advocates is credited with protecting the fragile nesting area of an endangered shorebird at Oxnard’s Ormond Beach over the long Fourth of July weekend.

In the past, a deluge of holiday beach goers has destroyed or otherwise disturbed a summer nesting colony of the California least tern. This year, Department of Fish and Game officials stepped up their protective measures to ensure that humans and animals did not get too close to the nests.

“Things went really well. It was a big success for the terns,” said Jamie Jackson, a least tern monitor for the state agency.

Jackson said she experienced only one encounter with trespassers: a man and his child accompanied by their pit bull terrier, which wasn’t on a leash, within the marked perimeter of the protected area.

“‘We chased him, but were unable to catch up,” she said. “He actually broke into a run, but fortunately he didn’t trample any nests.”

Alan Sanders, conservation chairman of the Sespe group of the Los Padres Chapter of the Sierra Club, who spent most of his holiday weekend at Ormond Beach on the watch for trespassers, was also pleased with the patrol’s results.

“The birds are still there,” Sanders said. “We had a few people on McWane [Boulevard] setting off fireworks, but not in the wetlands or where the birds are.”

California least terns, swift-flying birds that dart over the waves hunting for small fish, are so sensitive to intruders that the presence of too many people, animals or motorized vehicles can drive them to abandon their nests. The 10-inch-long shorebirds have a white belly, gray wings and a mark resembling a black cap on their heads.

Two years ago, Fourth of July revelers strayed too close to the birds’ colony and all of them disappeared until the following nesting season.

To keep the terns in place for their entire nesting season, which continues through mid-September, experts from the Department of Fish and Game and numerous volunteers began posting warning signs and erecting chain-link fences around the colony last year to protect the birds’ nests. Their efforts paid off--the birds stayed through the summer.

This year, despite scattered incidents of vandalism--such as people using the signs for firewood--the terns came back in even greater numbers, from 60 nests in 1995 to approximately 83 nests with 175 birds this breeding season.

Work to protect the terns’ Ormond Beach habitat has worked so well that the birds have begun to use the area as a stop on their autumn flight to Central America, Sanders said.

“This indicates that the habitat is really good,” Sanders said. “The parents are bringing their young to Ormond to fatten them up for their long migration south.”