CT Army National Guard Aids Great Gull Project

If you are anywhere near the Groton shoreline on Friday April 25, 2014, you may see an unusual site. The Connecticut Army National Guard will airlift 28,000 pounds of lumber and equipment out to Great Gull Island  in Long Island Sound. Great Gull Island, owned by the American Museum of Natural History , provides nesting habitat for over 9,500 pairs of Common Terns and 1,500 pairs of Roseate Terns. This represents the largest concentration of nesting Common Terns in the world, and the largest concentration of nesting Roseate Terns in the Western Hemisphere.

Great Gull Island, 17 acres in size, is the site of a former army fort with crumbling battlements and boulders surrounding the edges of the island. The Common Terns use the interior island, while the Roseate Terns nest in the boulders. Vegetation, including many invasive plant species, has overtaken parts of the island causing loss of nesting habitat. Connecticut Sea Grant, CLEAR, and US Fish and Wildlife Service are working with the Natural History Museum to develop and implement a habitat management plan for this island.

The lumber would have been transported by boat if it was not  for Superstorm Sandy. The storm destroyed the recently completed dock at Great Gull Island making travel to and from the Island difficult enough for people let alone getting supplies out there. Helen Hays is the manager of the Great Gull Island project and has worked on the Island since 1969, monitoring, banding and counting the bird populations. Hays noted that the Storm overwashed parts of the island forcing the birds to look for and move to other areas for nesting.

The Connecticut Army National Guard will use a CH-47 medium-lift Chinook helicopter to transport 28,000 pounds of lumber out to the Island. The lumber, purchased with grants from the USFWS and the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, will be used to build bird blinds and terraced nest boxes for tern nesting. The blinds are used to observe the birds and the nest boxes will increase nesting area for the terns.

Volunteers will help load the lumber at the Groton-New London Airport and volunteers on the island will unload, and others will start building blinds and terrace boxes in preparation for the return of the terns around April 27^.

The project to build the bird blinds and terraced nest boxes was developed by Julianna Barrett, assistant educator at Connecticut Sea Grant and UConn CLEAR, Suzanne Paton, a senior biologist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Helen Hays. It was one of the actions proposed in the Great Gull Island Management & Invasives Control Project, a project funded through the Long Island Sound Futures Fund in 2012.

This article was written by Julianna Barrett, assistant educator at Connecticut Sea Grant and the UConn CLEAR project, and was reposted here from a blog posted on the UConn CLEAR website.