Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the California Gull Management topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
California gull boom in San Francisco Bay complicates conservation as Mono Lake gulls decline
Summary
Presenters at the Mono Lake workshop described an ecological conundrum: California gull colonies in San Francisco Bay grew rapidly after Mono Lake breeding habitat was lost in the late 1970s, creating intense predation pressure on native bay nesting birds; at the same time, Mono Lake's gull population and productivity have fallen, complicating regional management and hazing policies.
Nathan Van Schmidt, director of regional strategies at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, summarized how a long‑term shift in California gull breeding has produced both local problems in the Bay and conservation tensions statewide. "We now have 60% of the total California gull population in the Bay area," Van Schmidt said, describing how population growth at artificial salt ponds and subsidized food sources (notably landfills) created large breeding colonies that predate native nesting birds and require repeated management actions.
Local impacts and management: Van Schmidt explained that big gull colonies in the South Bay have driven nest predation and near‑zero fledging success for some native species; managers annually haze or destroy gull nests on constructed islands to reduce predation on threatened shorebirds and terns. He estimated current annual management costs for landfill hazing programs at roughly $800,000 to $2 million, depending on program scope.
Mono Lake connection and conservation tradeoffs: Ryan Bernett and other Mono Lake presenters described trends of declining gull nesting and near‑collapsed productivity years at Mono Lake in 2022 and 2024. That decline at the native stronghold adds complexity to Bay management: displacing large numbers of birds in the Bay—whether by habitat alteration or direct removal—could affect an increasingly imperiled Mono Lake population if birds redistributed, while doing nothing risks ongoing damage to local endangered and declining Bay species.
Panelists said the situation is a ‘‘wicked problem’’ in which restoration of tidal marsh in the Bay, gull control on historic colonies, and the need to maintain Mono Lake habitat all interact. Van Schmidt urged retaining and restoring native hypersaline habitats and cautioned that local hazing policy should be reassessed in light of declines elsewhere.
The workshop closed with logistics about posting slides and recordings and a request for questions to be submitted by July 2 to the State Water Resources Control Board staff.
