Working to save the common tern: A summer internship experience

Angelina Tang '28 spent her summer as a Cornell Cooperative Extension intern at the Cornell Biological Field Station near Syracuse, New York. During her internship, she harnessed her love of animals and her expertise in communications to work toward grassroots conservation of the common tern.

The common tern is a sweet little waterbird, with white wings like an angel’s and a distinctive kee-er cry. They are fierce protectors of their families, fearlessly chasing down eagles and tirelessly building up their ground nests, which they make on islands and shorelines, as waves threaten to wash their eggs away.

The common tern, contrary to its name, is growing uncommon across inland North America. Human disturbance, habitat degradation and increased predation of eggs and chicks have lowered nesting success, and population declines as severe as 75% have been observed at colonies over the past 25 years, putting them on pace to effectively disappear within our lifetime.

This jarring decline is why I spent my summer as a Cornell Cooperative Extension intern at the Cornell Biological Field Station (CBFS) near Syracuse, New York. My love for animals feeds into my passion for conservation, and I harness my expertise in communications for this purpose.

During my time on the shores of Oneida Lake, I crafted a comprehensive outreach program called the Inland Common Tern Conservation Initiative (ICTCI). I was guided by my mentors from the Cornell Department of Natural Resources and the Environment: Jennifer Arnold, Cornell adjunct professor and Penn State professor of biology; Stephen Oswald, Cornell researcher and Penn State researcher; and James Watkins, CBFS director.

a woman wearing a sun hat walks with the wind blowing back her long hair and water and a boat in the distance behind her — Photo by Paul Treadwell.

Extension refers to community outreach and engagement, disseminating scientific knowledge in a practical way that people can act on and benefit from. As an extension intern, I both developed media for information-sharing – including a website, brochures and a video – and made active connections with community members to distribute those media.

Larger components of the project included the “A Tern in Every Town” program, in which we placed tern figurines in local businesses around the lake and created a scavenger hunt for them, and active programming, where I visited schools, parks and summer camps to teach people directly about terns. Through these and other activities, my goal was to have as many people fall in love with the common tern as possible.

I am glad to have successfully met my goal – between programming with locals and my social media posts, I reached over 15,000 people! The plight of the common tern is not well-known, but after my internship, thousands of people, including much of the Oneida Lake community, are now aware of their struggles. This is a useful platform from which to start to work towards conservation initiatives such as policy advocacy or colony restoration with the support of the community.

Additionally, as part of my project, I produced a set of lesson plans for teachers and science educators to use in the future, so that even though I am no longer at Oneida Lake, knowledge about tern life history and declines can continue to be spread. The aim of the ICTCI is to have my entire outreach program used as a template by other common tern conservationists around North America, raising public awareness so that it is easier to advocate for protection and restoration for these birds.

a statue of a tern sits on a table with other knickknacks and a card with a QR code — A scavenger hunt statue of a tern sits on a table in a local business near Oneida Lake. The statues were 3-D printed at Cornell. Tang helped with sanding and prototype painting. Photo provided.

a bird sits on a post, silhouetted against the sky — Common tern numbers have declined up to 75% over the last 25 years.

While my project has helped the terns, the terns have also helped me. I participated in weekly scientific fieldwork at the islands on Oneida Lake where the birds breed, getting to know them and their character. The terns embody perseverance. In mid-June of this year, strong winds on the lake created devastating waves that washed away the majority of the terns’ nests mere days before the eggs were expected to hatch.

Despite this blow and despite nesting success declining the further the summer progresses as environmental conditions become sub-optimal, the terns all tried again, laying new clutches and hatching a flock of chicks in late July. If these little waterbirds are so willing to try again and persevere, then why shouldn’t we, in our quest to protect and save them?

My favorite Oneida Lake tern was a young adult, not yet of breeding age, that was hanging around the colony and checking out the nesting conditions with a view to breeding within the next few years. She assumes there will be a next year, amid habitat degradation and shrinking islands. Conservation work and island restoration is essential to ensure that there is an island for her to return to – and for her chicks into the future.

a woman walks in a lake while terns fly around her

Throughout my CCE internship, I experienced the thrill of successful conservation education. I saw my work make a difference in how people thought about the terns in real time, and that inspired me to fight twice as hard as the terns do to survive in a rapidly changing world. Science communication is my passion, and conservation education is my dream. By falling in love with the terns, I fell in love with my dream all over again.

Angelina Tang ’28 is an animal science and communication double major and the communications assistant for the Cornell CALS Department of Animal Science.

Working to save the common tern: A summer internship experience

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