Last updated: January 9, 2024
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Seabirds from Further South Find Refuge on the Channel Islands
The National Park Service (NPS) protects vast amounts of public land that is home to numerous species who rely upon functioning ecosystems to survive. When we travel to our national parks it’s easy to see some of our favorite wildlife roaming the landscape. But what we don’t see are the species who may not be there yet.
Large, protected landscapes provide critical refuge for species that require open, natural spaces away from urban development. For example, wildlife may need considerable space to find food or a new mate. Other times, species using park landscapes may have been driven from their homes and forced to seek new habitats. As our climate continues to change in ways we have never seen before, protected open spaces are increasingly serving as critical refuge for species needing to find new homes.
NPS / Michael Ready
For millennia, the California Channel Islands have served as a refuge for numerous species, especially birds who have the ability to travel great distances. The California brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis californicanus) is one such species. It is an amazing seabird that has fought its way back from near extinction in the recent past. In 1970, the devastating effects of an insecticide—Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)—led to the species being placed on the endangered species list. Park managers counted a meager 500 nests on West Anacapa Island. However, by 1985, more than 10 years after the ban on DDT use, there were nearly 5,000 nests on the Island! And those numbers continued to climb until 2009, when the species faced a new challenge. A collapse in the northern sardine population, the primary food source for the Pelican, again drove pelican nesting numbers down. But this is where it gets really interesting.
By 2014, pelican populations, in conjunction with the northern sardine, began to rebound in the Channel Islands. But while the populations on the Channel Islands began their recovery, the population that breeds in the warming waters in the Sea of Cortez, the heart of the pelican’s historic range, experienced a nearly complete breeding collapse due to a lack of food. In recent years, that population has had to find new areas to feed, roost, and survive.
Following prey north into cooler waters, the Sea of Cortez pelicans have found the Channel Islands to be an excellent refuge. Suitable habitat and abundant resources have allowed the species to not only survive but thrive here. Recent surveys on Anacapa Island have detected more than 12,000 pelican nests. How many of those nests are from recent arrivals from the Gulf of California is unknown, but National Park Service ecologists believe they are making up a significant portion of the growing population.
The Southern California Research Learning Center is supporting park managers and our partners to develop a monitoring plan that will help us understand how California brown pelican populations are shifting and how coastal ecosystems are responding to that change. And it’s not only brown pelicans who are finding new hope at the Channel Islands. Brown- and blue-footed boobies, both typically considered tropical seabirds, have begun to establish nests and breed on the Islands! Park managers are eager to document and understand this unusual development as well.
In these times of great ecological change, we often hear of tragic stories involving the extinction of species. And while we need to do everything we can to prevent future loss of life, it is equally important to tell the stories of hope and success as well. The Southern California Research Learning Center is working on this front as well. Together with Channel Islands biologists, interpretive rangers, and climate change experts, the Learning Center is telling this story of hope and reminding the public of the value of protected spaces for all of the species we share this planet with, even the ones that may not be using them yet.
A Publication of the Southern California Research Learning Center
The Southern California Research Learning Center is one of 18 Research Learning Centers across the country. These centers strive to increase scientific activity in the national park system, to communicate research that supports stewardship and to make science part of the visitor experience. By working with a variety of partners, we aim to support science-based decision-making, increase science literacy and promote a conservation ethic within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Channel Islands National Park, and Cabrillo National Monument.