Learn about San Francisco Bay breeding waterbirds from Dr. Josh Ackerman of USGS, who has looked at South Bay avocets, stilts and terns to understand how their abundance has changed since the inception more than 20 years ago of the Restoration Project. He has also examined the effect on birds of predators and the utility of various management actions to maintain and expand waterbird numbers as former industrial salt ponds are restored to tidal wetlands. Those management actions include preserving and constructing nesting islands; placing decoys and broadcasting bird calls; hazing predator gulls; and conducting wetland landscape scenario planning. At this Sept. 9, 2025 presentation, he discusses the results of his team's 2005-2024 nest surveys and research on California gull predation, as well as the success of their social attraction experiments to establish Bay tern colonies, and the "recipe" they have developed through modeling for designing new islands to best attract and accommodate nesting waterbirds.
