Loon on Lake Ozonia, submitted as Photo of the Day 7/7/10. Photo: Joe Woody
(07/20/10) Volunteers fanned out over 330 lakes for the annual Adirondack loon count Saturday. It was the tenth annual "count," and many of those volunteers have participated since the beginning, often reporting on loons they've come to know over the years.
Zoe Smith is the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Adirondack Program. She tells Martha Foley it's that personal commitment that fuels the effort to track the region's loon population.
Smith says that many volunteers have participated in the
loon count for nearly a decade. "We get lot of stories about people who say 'our
loons are back this year' and they'll know the history of those loons from
10-15 years ago, how many chicks they have, if one's missing." Local resorts
and hotels signed up for lakes so that their guests could join in the counting
effort.
Although it's hard to distinguish one loon from another,
Smith says that simply spending an hour or so watching loons makes them easier
to track. Four years ago the organization estimated that the Adirondacks
are home to some 2000 loons. They hope to complete another analysis of loon population
data at the end of this year.
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