Common Murre Restoration Project

One of the projects approved in 1995 was the Common Murre Restoration Project, which was allocated $4,916,430 over 10 years. The San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge was selected by the trustee council to lead the project. The Common Murre Restoration Project uses a technique called social attraction to lure birds back to Devil's Slide Rock. The project has been under way since January 1996. Social attractants, including decoys of adult murres, decoys of murre chicks and eggs, compact disc players projecting amplified murre sounds, and three-sided mirror boxes, are being used to attract the highly colonial birds back to the rock.

Devil's Slide Rock. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The project was incredibly successful in its first year, far exceeding expectations of the biologists and managers involved. Within 24 hours of establishing the social attraction devices on the rock, birds began landing at the colony, which had been abandoned for 10 years following the spill. The birds attended the rock regularly that year and fledged three chicks. The number of birds breeding on Devil's Slide Rock has continued to increase each year, with 1999 the most successful year to date. Seventy eggs were laid, 59 chicks fledged, and 136 adult murres were counted on the rock in 1 day. Plans are now under way to reduce the number of decoys on the rock in order to provide more space for breeding murres. As the number of murres on Devil's Slide Rock continues to increase, the project comes closer to its ultimate goal of restoring a self-sustaining population of common murres.

The trustees are also collecting recovery monitoring data, including aerial surveys of murre and cormorant colonies in central and northern California.

Habitat Acquisition for Marbled Murrelets

The second seabird restoration project resulting from the Apex Houston oil spill consists of habitat acquisition for marbled murrelets. The trustees have provided funding for 5 years of monitoring related to the old-growth nesting habitat. In addition, the trustees have contributed funding to enhance cassin's auklet habitat on the Farallons Island.

The following material is excerpted from a state of California news release announcing the trustees' plans for property acquisition:

The California Department of Fish and Game's (DFG) Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), in its capacity as lead state agency for the Apex Houston Trustee Council (AHTC), has crafted a partnership between the nonprofit Sempervirens Fund and AHTC to acquire habitat in the Santa Cruz Mountains for the marbled murrelet, a threatened species of seabird that nests in old growth forests.

The coastal old growth forest nesting habits of the marbled murrelet, whose breeding plumage matches the bark of the ancient trees, are considered unique among seabirds. The Santa Cruz Mountains population of marbled murrelets is estimated at less than 1,000 individuals, and is separated by a lack of suitable nesting habitat from the northern California population that nests in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties.

$560,000 of the settlement has been transferred to the Sempervirens Fund to purchase and monitor 111 acres of valuable redwood forest wildlife habitat between Big Basin Redwoods and Butano State Parks, in the Gazos Creek Watershed of southern San Mateo County. Total cost of the property is $1.45 million. Following the purchase, Sempervirens will transfer the lands to State Parks, to advance the protection and management of the Gazos Creek Watershed and further the connection between Big Basin State Park and Butano State Park.

Gazos Mountain Camp, as it is called, is primarily second-growth forest, but contains numerous residual old-growth douglas fir and redwood trees that provide nesting habitat for the marbled murrelet, a state and federally listed species. The property, an important, newly discovered breeding area of the marbled murrelet, will be incorporated into Butano State Park, which is a known murrelet nesting area. An additional benefit to wildlife on this land is the confluence of two main branches of Gazos Creek, which is a sensitive habitat for native coho salmon.