By Susan Milius
This year completes the relocation of the largest nesting colony of Caspian terns in North America from one island to another, reports Daniel Roby of U.S. Geological Survey in Corvallis, Ore.
Dredges dumping spoils created Rice Island in the Columbia River, and in the mid 1980s, observers noted Caspian terns breeding there. By 2000, 8,000 pairs of the terns were nesting in the estuary, 10 percent of the species.
“Worldwide populations are generally not faring well,” Roby says.