In the News

February 12, 2007

This story appeared in the New Bedford Standard Times on February 12, 2007

INSIDE SCIENCE: Citizen scientists keep track of birds

by Autumn Spanne, staff writer at The Standard-Times and a diversity fellow of the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting. Her e-mail is aspanne@s-t.com

For 20 years, volunteers from the Lloyd Center for the Environment in South Dartmouth have braved frigid weather to count waterfowl wintering in local estuaries and points south. Mark Mello, research director of the non-profit Lloyd Center, leads the count. Once ponds, lakes and streams freeze further north, many geese and duck species head south to estuaries less likely to be completely iced over. Volunteers go out once in December before the waters freeze and again in late January to ensure an accurate count. Mr. Mello hopes that their data can eventually be combined with other surveys to track trends in bird populations and migration patterns over time. He talks about changes the volunteers have observed, and why community involvement matters.

WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU NOTICED IN THE WATERFOWL NUMBERS OVER TIME?

Some species have remained relatively stable, like the bufflehead. On the other hand, certain geese species, like Canada geese, seem to be losing their migratory instincts so now you have more of a year-round population. The geese used to breed north of here and would migrate south in the fall and winter. Chesapeake Bay was the big area...and then you'd see them coming back in the spring. That pattern has changed. More and more are staying in this area, wintering here. Some of it may have to do with interbreeding with domesticated species. It may be that other patterns have changed, too, like land use. And of course, it's always nice to blame global warming, but in any given winter it's hard to say that conclusively. But that's why these surveys are important over time.

HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO PINPOINT SPECIFIC REASONS FOR ANY OF THE CHANGES IN BIRD POPULATIONS?

Eel grass is a good example. As eel grass has been increasing, the brant, another geese species, is increasing. Eel grass virtually got wiped out in the 1930s, and 90 percent of the black duck population disappeared with it. There's been a slow increase as eel grass has come back. In Clark's Cove, for example, since they built the new sewage treatment plant so that combined sewage overflow is not directly discharging into the cove, the water quality has improved, and eel grass is really coming back. We don't do a survey of Clark's Cove, but that's an example of why it's important to monitor. As far as our surveys, we'd need other data sources to be able to correlate it.

WHAT OTHER DATA WOULD YOU WANT TO LOOK AT?

You'd really have to look at many different kinds of data to correlate changes in the system. We'd have to start looking region-wide and get together with other groups like Mass Audubon and coordinate with these big, monster surveys that take place down south, because a lot of birds go to a few places, to examine all the long-term data. But since we don't have a penny to do this, for now it's just getting the data, getting it entered and waiting for the chance. It doesn't diminish the value of the data to wait. But our program shows the value of volunteers. A lot of our data sets have been generated by volunteers, which is good because it gets people involved and invested in it.

A BIG PART OF THE LLOYD CENTER'S MISSION IS EDUCATION. WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT GETTING PEOPLE INVESTED, WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO REACH YOUNG PEOPLE?

When I was a little kid everyone went out and hunted and fished. Just think of it: every Wednesday afternoon my father took off work. He'd come into Roosevelt Junior High with his hunting jacket and wait outside my locker to make sure I didn't dawdle. Nobody batted an eyelash. People just had more of a connection one way or another with the outdoors. I'm amazed thinking about when I was a kid how many people around us knew everything about natural history in this area. Now you don't find that.

WHY NOT?

I think things went downhill because of urbanization. We were a country where the majority of people lived in rural settings. Now the majority is living in cities. You just don't have the contact with nature. The country was growing after World War II and the Depression. Other issues took precedence. But now, with the advent of water problems, issues about lack of biodiversity, states listing rare species and actually giving protection to these species, there's a need to know where these animals live, and what's affecting them. So there's been a resurgence in interest.

For more information about the Lloyd Center for the Environment's volunteer and educational programming, visit www.lloydcenter.org

Editor's note: Inside Science is a regular Question and Asnwer column on the Opinion page that focuses on a local scientist and the researcher's work.