Nest rafts help to boost loon populations

Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation has installed them on 36 lakes to protect breeding loons

By Mike Lynch

During a short paddle in mid-June, a staff member from the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation and I drifted near a small island on a northern Adirondack lake. The island was filled with white birches and a pine with branches reaching out over the water. Beneath the pine was our reason for the trip: An adult loon sat upon a nest resting upon an artificial raft made specifically for rearing chicks. 

The artificial loon raft is part of an effort by the Adirondack Loon Center to bolster loon reproduction rates in the region. It’s one of 45 rafts on 36 lakes the center has placed on waters in the Adirondack Park and its periphery. The center requested the lakes remain unnamed in order to protect the loons.

The structures are put on the water in time for the breeding season in May and June and are removed before the waters freeze. The center owns 50 of them.

“We have these rafts where we can place them in areas where loon pairs have been documented to be failing to hatch chicks successfully due to factors that a raft can mitigate,” said Griffin Archambault, a research biologist with the loon center, in a phone interview. 

Funding for the project came from a 2021 settlement over a 2003 oil spill that killed more than 1,100 loons wintering in a New England bay. In that incident, Bouchard Transportation Co. barge spilled 98,000 gallons of fuel oil, impacting more than 100 miles of Buzzards Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. Some of those loons that died spent the warmer months in the Adirondacks.

As part of the settlement agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife created grants to help breeding loons in New York and New England states. The Saranac Lake-based loon center, state Department of Environmental Conservation and SUNY Environmental College of Science and Forestry received a $800,000 grant for projects to help breeding loons.

Some of that money is allocated toward the raft program, while other funding helps with projects such as protecting loons from lead poisoning and fishing line entanglement. The grant runs through 2026.

Loons at risk

Some factors that have negatively impacted breeding loons are rising waters that flood nests, due to storms increasing in frequency and intensity in recent years. 

Human disturbance, in the form of development or activity, can also be problematic. Plus, there are natural factors such as predation. Some rafts have roofs to protect the birds and eggs from predators, such as bald eagles and gulls. 

“The reason why we’re targeting some of these more natural factors is that there were a lot of loons lost suddenly to this oil spill,” Archambault said. “So we’re trying to bring that reproductive success even higher and trying to recruit more individuals back into the population to replace the ones that were lost.”

Site selection is done through a careful evaluation of factors, including ensuring the site is protected from regular wakes from boats. In addition, if put in the wrong place, the nests can lead to territorial disputes between birds.  

Sitting in a kayak Denise Silfee, director education and communications at the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation, said it’s important to aid reproducing loons because they are a k-selected species. In other words, they are similar to orcas, bison, and even humans in that they have few offspring over their lifetimes.  

“If there’s a rapid change in their environment, they can’t recover as well (as some other animals),” she said. 

Total population unknown

It’s been more than a decade since a population estimate has been conducted for loons in the Adirondack Park. The last one placed the population at about 2,000 birds. They are a species of special concern in New York state, a ranking behind threatened and endangered species. 

But the overall population snapshot is a bit blurry now.

“There’s some evidence to suggest that overall it seems like in the park we might have a lot more loons than we used to but reproductive success is beginning to decline,” Archambault said. 

Last year loons used seven of the 34 rafts put out by the center. Four pairs of loons used them to raise families. It can take several seasons before loons feel comfortable using the rafts, Archambault said. Nineteen of the rafts were out for the first time last year.

In 2023, the center deployed 12 rafts. Two were used by loons, resulting in three babies.

The structures are not allowed along state lands now but could be in the future as part of a set of amendments to the State Land Master Plan that still need to be voted on. The state Adirondack Park Agency has proposed revising the definition for wildlife management structures to include species of special concern. In the past only structures for endangered and threatened species have been allowed. If that amendment is approved, the rafts would still have to be permitted by DEC on a case-by-case basis.

“We’re hoping that the areas that we’ve put them out, they’re gonna last for many years to come, even if our funding for purchasing new rafts and doing things with them starts to dry up,” Archambault said. 

(Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include information that the state Adirondack Park Agency has proposed to include language in the State Land Master Plan amendments that would allow loon rafts. The previous edition of this article mistakenly stated that the proposal to include loon rafts in the State Land Master Plan hadn’t gained traction. )