Susie Meadows, manager of the Project Puffin Visitor Center, will discuss some of the factors limiting Maine seabird populations and will discuss how techniques, developed by Project Puffin, have led to the restoration of puffins and terns to historic nesting islands in the Gulf of Maine. Her presentation will take place at the Project Puffin Visitor Center on Wednesday, July 2, at 5 p.m.
Humans have devastated seabird colonies in many parts of the world by excessive hunting for food and feathers and by introducing mammals such as cats and rats to otherwise secure nesting islands. Worldwide, 23 percent of all seabird species are globally threatened. In North America, coastal development is a growing concern as the human population is becoming increasingly concentrated, with 70 percent of the United States’ population living within 100 miles of the coast.
Although seabird nesting islands seem safe due to their remoteness, they are intimately connected to human activities. For example, Maine seabird nesting islands are affected by large populations of herring and great black-backed gulls that benefit from garbage and fisheries waste practices hundreds of miles from nesting islands. As large gulls increase in number, they deter smaller, migratory seabirds such as puffins and terns from nesting on many of their historic nesting islands.
The Project Puffin Visitor Center is located at 311 Main Street in Rockland and offers visitors an easy-access storefront center to learn about Audubon’s Project Puffin and other seabird-conservation projects in Maine and to find out where and how to see Maine birds and other wildlife. Among the center’s retail products and educational exhibits is a continuous, big-screen Web broadcast of real-time images and sounds of puffins transmitted by a robotic on-island “puffin cam” that visitors can operate remotely from the center.