Research: Mortality, Mercury, other North American Projects

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The VLRP coordinates research programs with the Northeast Loon Study Workgroup (NELSWG) comprised of northeast conservation organizations, including Canada, that work with the Common Loon, as well as many state and federal wildlife and environmental conservation agencies.   See Threats for details about issues discussed below.  Some research areas include:

Mortality Studies
Population Modeling
Toxic Effects of Mercury
Impacts of Recreational Disturbance
Emerging Threats

Mortality studies

The VLRP sends all retrieved dead loons to Tufts University Wildlife Veterinary Program to determine the likely cause of mortality.  Researchers at Tufts have necropsied more than 1,500 loons since the 1980s.  Their work revealed that lead fishing gear was the highest single source of mortality of adult loons in New England, which has spurred legislation to reduce the exposure of lead to wildlife.  These studies have also tracked rates of naturally occurring diseases, motorboat hits, fights with intruder loons, and other causes of mortality.

Population Modeling

Vermont and New Hampshire have the most complete and longest running loon population data sets anywhere in the world, thus our data is ideal for assessing what factors will cause population numbers to rise and fall.

Toxic Effects of Mercury

using the loon as indicator of bioaccumulation and behavioral effects
                Collection of blood and feather samples (primary collected 1999-2001)
                Opportunistic collection of eggs left in nests

Impacts of Recreational Disturbance   

How much has the use of nesting rafts helped our loon population?  Do nest warning signs really work?  and more importantly, do at-risk nest sites fail more often than hidden nests?  These are some of the questions we are trying to answer in cooperation with NELSWG.  In 2008, the VLRP sponsored a Sterling College student, Anika Klem, for her senior project, where she conduct a preliminary study on the effectiveness of nest warning signs and developed a measure of nest exposure to human disturbance.

Emerging Threats

Through NELSWG, the VLRP is continually learning about new threats to loons that need to be monitored and watched for.