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They may seem like unlikely conservation tools, but two barges anchored off the Mississippi River in Missouri’s Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary serve as the front lines in an effort to return an endangered shorebird to Upper Mississippi River.
The barges served as home to dozens of interior least terns last summer, an endangered species that is rarely seen north of St. Louis ever since humans drastically altered the course of the River to make navigation easier. These alterations fundamentally changed the River's natural flow and habitat, wiping out most of the sandbars where the terns prefer to nest.
The project sponsors created an artificial floating sandbar for nesting. They lashed surplus pontoon dredge barges together and covered them with a mixture of sand and gravel. They added pieces of driftwood to provide shelter, pairs of tern decoys and solar-powered boxes that broadcast recordings of the terns’ calls to help attract the birds.
After just two weeks, least terns were spotted landing on the barge. In just over a month later, the birds build over a dozen nests. The artificial island eventually drew between 32 and 36 of the endangered birds, which built 16 nests between them and laid two to three eggs per nest. More than two dozen hatchlings were spotted in the weeks that followed.
The birds have now headed south for the winter. But the barges will be back in place this spring for the next nesting season.
This Mississippi in the News story is based on an article in Our Mississippi, a newsletter of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.