BirdLife Australia equipment stolen

Man fined, monitoring camera returned

The Australian Fairy Tern is a threatened species, classified as Endangered. Being a beach-nesting bird, the Fairy Tern’s breeding habits have contributed to this parlous state. They don’t build nests, but, instead, they lay their eggs directly into a shallow depression scraped into the sand of beaches and other coastal wetlands, such as estuaries, lagoons and saltworks.

Fairy Terns are threatened by disturbance from people using coastal areas around nesting colonies, as well as predation of eggs and young (often resulting directly from disturbance by people), and an increased incidence of flooding of nest sites by an increasing incidence of extra-high tides.

To combat these threats BirdLife Australia is trialling an innovative alternative solution to their nesting site woes.

Inspired by conservation work conducted by the RSPB and others across Europe and in the United States, which mostly targeted nesting Common Terns, a floating nesting site was installed at Avalon Coastal Reserve (an internationally recognised wetland of importance on the western shores of Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay).

The artificial nesting site, situated on a floating pontoon, was set up on former salt evaporation ponds to encourage Fairy Terns to return to breed. The beauty of this set-up is that it remains suitable for the terns to breed on, regardless of how deep the water gets.

However, protecting any threatened species is a difficult task, and it is made all the harder by interference by people.

Some of BirdLife Australia’s high-tech equipment which was being used to monitor the floating nest site at Avalon was allegedly stolen recently, along with a number of 3D-printed tern decoys, which had been placed strategically to attract Fairy Terns to the site. In addition, some sensitive tern breeding habitat was also damaged during the alleged theft.

However, it was far from a perfect heist, as the alleged perpetrator was readily identified from images captured on the camera monitoring the site, and he was subsequently arrested and prosecuted. His penalty was a fine of $790 for disturbing the habitat of a threatened species. The monitoring equipment was recovered and returned to BirdLife Australia.

“This research is so important for the Endangered Fairy Tern, and it’s vital that we are able to continue this work without disturbance,” said Chris Purnell, BirdLife Australia’s Program Manager of Wetland birds, who is conducting the trial.