Flap Over a Sanctuary : Breeding Project for Least Terns May Fall Victim to Claim That They Endanger Jets

The California least tern, it seems, just can’t win.

A wisp of a bird weighing less than a parakeet, the least tern was disappearing at such a rapid clip it made the government’s first endangered species list in 1973. Now it’s being characterized by the Federal Aviation Administration and the city’s Department of Airports as a serious threat to the scores of jumbo jets that roar out of Los Angeles International Airport each day.

Fearing that an airliner could be damaged by striking one of the diminutive birds, or by a hawk hunting the tiny tern, the agencies want to dismantle a 2.75-acre experimental least tern breeding colony on Dockweiler State Beach, just over a mile from the tip of the airport’s runways.

Biologists backing the EPA-funded project insist that the little birds pose no threat to air traffic. But a war of memos between county, state and federal agencies has broken out in recent weeks, threatening to shoot down the breeding project just days before the least terns are scheduled to arrive in their annual migration from Central America.

“This isn’t like a civics experiment, where you can just do it any old time,” said Pat Baird, a Cal State Long Beach professor who is coordinating the project. “We’re right at T-minus-10 and now we’ve come to a standstill.”

Roughly 200 pairs of breeding terns are expected to fly along the Dockweiler beach within the next two weeks on their way to an existing fenced-in breeding colony in Venice, Baird said.

But that colony has become overcrowded as the bird slowly has come back from the brink of extinction, scientists say, and they want to help some of the younger terns establish new summer quarters on Dockweiler.

Normally, when a colony gets crowded, fledgling terns preparing to mate for the first time will seek out new territory to set up their sandy homes, lay their sand-colored eggs and raise their sand-camouflaged chicks.

But the urban boom along Southern California’s coastline makes such a move difficult. The terns’ favorite nesting sites--broad, sandy beaches near estuaries and river mouths--begin to fill with sun-worshiping, egg-crushing people just as the birds are ready to begin nesting.

The only way to help the birds survive, biologists say, is to fence off portions of beach for the exclusive use of least terns. The existing Venice breeding colony has been protected in that way since the late 1970s.

Two years ago, with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, scientists used wooden tern decoys and amplified tape recordings of the tern’s shrill mating call to try to attract young birds to the newly designated Dockweiler colony about half a mile north of Imperial Highway, Baird said.

Unfortunately, bureaucratic wrangling prevented starting the project until mid-May in 1991--several weeks after the bird’s nesting season had begun, she said. As a result, no birds set up homes inside the site.

Last year, an even bigger fence went up and decoys were put in place at the right time, but a weak El Nino effect, in which unusually warm ocean water alters weather and wildlife patterns, drove away the terns’ preferred anchovy dinners and, again, no birds nested at the new site.

Two young birds did land inside the new colony during that season, however, leading Baird to believe that this might be the year the new colony would become a success.

But then airport officials found out about the project.

In November, a city airport environmental manager notified the county Department of Beaches and Harbors that the new colony posed a threat “due to the potential risk of a jet engine ingesting a bird, which could result in an airborne disaster.”

“Jet engines have clearances that are only in the 1,000th of an inch,” said Maurice Laham, an airport environmental manager. “Anything at all getting in there could cause something to stick and other things to break and a plane to come crashing down.”

The county department responded by ordering Baird and her partners with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to tear down the tern fence within 30 days.

Since then, memos and counter-memos have been flying between more than half a dozen agencies as scientists have fought to save the $60,000, EPA-sponsored colony.

Least terns, the scientists told airport officials, rarely fly higher than 30 feet. Male terns do reach heights of 100 feet when courting a mate, Baird said, but even the most heavily laden jet crossing over the new colony is at 300 feet, according to FAA estimates.

In addition, scientists note, least terns already nest at several airports, including Oakland Airport and Alameda Air Station, where the birds must fly across a runway to get to their feeding areas. No tern/aircraft collisions have been reported at either location, officials said, and none have ever been reported at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field or the nearby Naval Training Center, where the terns also nest.

FAA and airport officials say they are even more concerned about the hawks and other birds of prey that might soar over the new colony hunting for chicks. But scientists say the raptors already live at the ends of the runways in tall palm trees from which they hunt field rodents living in the airport’s sand dune areas.

Then airport officials expressed concern about low-flying helicopters running along the shoreline below the jet take-off pattern. One tern striking a rotor blade could lead to disaster, they said. Researchers repeated their contention that the terns do not fly high enough to interfere with aircraft.

Now FAA officials say they are worried that scientists will decide at some later date that jet noise or jet fuel residue is harmful to the terns and will try to shut down the airport.

The scientists say they are exasperated.

“If noise or fuel vapor were a factor, those colonies already at airports certainly wouldn’t stay there,” said Baird, who theorizes that the bird’s hearing has shifted to a point where it feels, instead of hears, the low-frequency jet noises.

“We just can’t seem to get them away from the idea that this one-ounce bird that flies at 30 feet and never flies in flocks is going to bring down a 747 at 500 feet,” she said.

FAA officials said the only comment they wanted to make on the terns was contained in a March 9 letter laying out the agency’s objections to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials. Spokeswoman Elly Brekke said the agency has not been given enough information on the terns to respond further.

She acknowledged, however, that neither the FAA nor the Department of Airports has jurisdiction over the state-owned land on which the colony sits.

Baird is now trying to work her way through that loophole.

The beach actually belongs to the state Department of Parks and Recreation, which has contracted management of it to the county Department of Beaches and Harbors. That department’s officials now insist that Baird must get an entry permit from them to begin operations in the colony, but they refuse to issue one until the FAA and Department of Airports clear it.

As the agency battles escalated, the county three weeks ago cut Baird’s locks off the EPA-owned colony fence and installed county-owned locks to keep the tern researchers out.

Baird said she got verbal permission from state Parks and Recreation officials to enter the compound.

“When you cut through all of this, you have to decide whether or not a small bird that hovers near the ground represents a threat,” said Dan Preece, superintendent of the state’s Angeles Parks and Recreation District. “We don’t see the bird as a threat . . . and I do have support from Sacramento to stand up for the bird.”

But county officials, who have filed a request with the California Coastal Commission to tear down the colony fence, still will not issue Baird a permit to get inside. Last week, she used bolt cutters to cut the fence open so she could check on equipment that had been stored at the site.

As soon as she had finished showing three of her students how to play the tern mating call on the sound system and set out the tern decoys, a county Beaches and Harbors official and a lifeguard again fastened the fence shut with county locks. They issued a warning that Baird was not to go back inside until the debate had been resolved.

But the terns won’t wait, Baird said, so she plans to be out there today to conduct another demonstration for students and colony volunteers--even if she has to do it from outside the fence.

“They told me I had better not get on the beach with my equipment,” she said. “I said they might just see a private citizen who happened to bring some tern decoys in her sand pail and some sound equipment playing my own kind of music.”

Tale of the Least Tern

* The California least tern (Sterna antillarum) is one of 12 recognized subspecies of the least tern. At one time, Southern California’s beaches teemed with the little birds, but human encroachment on their breeding areas reduced the bird to an estimated 600 nesting pairs in 1975.

* Researchers estimate that there are as many as 1,800 pairs of least terns now nesting at about two dozen sites from San Francisco Bay to the Mexican border.

* The birds are slender and about nine inches long, with a white body and pale gray wings tipped with black. During breeding season, the bird has a black cap on its head and its yellow bill has a black tip.

* Least terns migrate to Mexico and Central America during the winter and return to their breeding grounds in mid-April. Before nesting takes place in May, the males perform intricate aerial courtship displays and win over a mate with gifts of choice morsels of food.

* Typically, the female tern lays one to four eggs in a shallow depression in the sand, which she decorates with small pebbles and shells. The adults take turns incubating the eggs for 20 to 25 days before the young hatch. Within two days, the tiny, sand-colored chicks leave the nest and roam freely through the tern colony.

Sources: California Department of Fish and Game and Prof. Pat Baird, Cal State Long Beach.