It was the summer of 1969, and Steve Kress, PhD \u201975, had just arrived in Maine\u2014off the coast, on one of the craggy islands in Muscongus Bay\u2014for a seasonal job as an ornithology instructor at Hog Island Audubon Camp<\/a>. While studying up on the region\u2019s native seabird populations, he came across a striking fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI read that puffins used to breed on islands in the bay\u2014and that led me to realize that humans caused them to disappear from excessive hunting,\u201d recalls Kress, now a visiting fellow with the Lab of Ornithology. \u201cBut did it always have to be that way? Would it be possible to bring them back?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1973, Kress\u2014then a grad student in environmental education in CALS\u2014had founded the National Audubon Society\u2019s Project Puffin<\/a>, with the aim of restoring the birds\u2019 once-thriving populations. Now, 50 years later, he has answered both questions: no, a human-inflicted species disappearance is not beyond repair\u2014and yes, the puffins could return.<\/p>\n<\/div> Although Maine still lists the birds as threatened, approximately 1,500 breeding pairs of the comical-looking, colorfully beaked creatures\u2014nicknamed \u201cclowns of the sea\u201d\u2014now nest on islands off its coast, thanks in large part to Project Puffin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s one of the state\u2019s most prominent conservation success stories, and Kress\u2019s efforts have bolstered its tourism industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSpecies come and go all the time,\u201d observes Kress, former vice president of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society. \u201cBut when humans are the driving force of their disappearance, we have an obligation to try to bring a species back to where it can still live.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n While puffins were once plentiful in Northern Europe and Canada, in the 19th and early 20th centuries they were heavily hunted for their meat and feathers\u2014to the point that when Kress arrived on the scene, there was just one known nesting pair in the entire U.S., on Maine\u2019s Matinicus Rock.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And at the time, there were no known examples of puffin colonies successfully relocating from one island to another\u2014since, as he explains, the seabirds generally \u201cmake a life commitment to a particular place.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Through <\/strong>a method Kress calls \u201csocial attraction,\u201d he developed a simple but ingenious way <\/strong>of enticing birds to nest on a particular island\u2014in this case, Eastern Egg Rock, about seven miles southeast of Hog Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Kress arrived on the scene, there was just one known nesting pair in the entire U.S.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Since puffins have a natural tendency to return to their birthplaces to breed, the team spent years (working under official permits) transporting hundreds of Canadian chicks to Eastern Egg Rock.<\/p>\n\n\n They hand-fed them inside artificial burrows and even used audio recordings and wooden decoys to make the island seem like it had an established colony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The hope, Kress explains, was that once the fledged chicks matured at sea, many would return to breed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought this would be a simple thing,\u201d muses Kress, who holds bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees (in zoology and wildlife management, respectively) from Ohio State University. \u201cA summer or two, I\u2019d just get some puffins\u00a0<\/strong>and they\u2019d come back and start a colony, and that\u2019d be it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1981\u2014eight years, plenty of naysayers, and some 950 transported puffin babies later\u2014five pairs were nesting on Eastern Egg Rock, a figure that has grown steadily in the intervening decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The project has even garnered a partnership with the popular\u00a0Barbara\u2019s Puffins<\/a>\u00a0cereal brand, with Kress\u2019s image gracing the back of its boxes for a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n In 2015, he released a memoir,\u00a0Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock<\/em><\/a>, published by Yale University Press. A version for young readers\u2014The Puffin Plan: Restoring Seabirds to Egg Rock and Beyond<\/em><\/a>\u2014followed five years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kress, who has twice served as director of the Hog Island camp, still summers in Maine with his wife (fellow alum Elissa Wolfson \u201981) and hosts a weeklong puffin course for adult learners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought this would be a simple thing; a summer or two, I\u2019d just get some puffins\u00a0<\/strong>and they\u2019d come back and start a colony.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Project Puffin remains a fully staffed National Audubon operation, employing more than a dozen people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Kress notes, the puffin-populated islands of Muscongus Bay\u2014both Eastern Egg and Matinicus Rock, where numbers have rebounded from that one nesting pair to more than 500\u2014have become seasonal field stations for college-aged seabird scholars, from Cornell and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though Kress retired as director of Project Puffin in 2019, the work he began is far from over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. puffins remain threatened, their colonies few and far between\u2014making populations keenly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, avian illnesses, oil spills, predators, and other threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s no end to the care they\u2019re going to take,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to restore them\u2014but leaving them would probably mean them disappearing from the places where we\u2019ve brought them back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, Kress is optimistic about the birds\u2019 future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPuffins are so charismatic; people care about them,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re one of those great voices of the ocean that people will listen to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Top photo by Steve Kress. All images provided unless otherwise indicated.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Published July 10, 2023 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Steve Kress, PhD \u201975, looks back on a 50-year effort to restore the \u2018clowns of the sea\u2019 to their breeding grounds off the Maine coast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":23638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"alumni_hub_syml_posts":[15310,9857,4630],"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[],"cornell_year_post":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-23626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/Steve-with-puffin-at-EER-by-Bill-Scholtz-4MG-A-819x1024.jpg\")
A Puffin Paradise<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/Puffin-gaping-at-OBrien-decoy-by-Stephen-Kress-A.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/Egg-Rock-storm-sky-by-Rose-Borzik-8-08-A.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/kress_w_puffin_chick-A.jpg\")
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/4852030240_3030b91c0e_o-A.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/one-week-old-puffin-at-MR-A.jpg\")
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![\"A](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/4852028110_6b19f5d0c0_o-A.jpg\")
Stories You May Like<\/h2>\n\t\t\t
![\"Protecting](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/IMG_2283_Southern-Africa_May-2022_Steve-Osofsky-A-2-608x342.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tProtecting All Creatures, Great and Small\u2014Around the Globe\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
![\"Cornell\u2019s](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/07\/Red-tailed-Hawk-Cam-2A-608x342.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tCornell\u2019s Beloved Hawks Raise a Family, Far Above Campus\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/Project-Puffin-Cover-A-694x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/6045880193_f6f987e179_o-A-1024x576.jpg\")
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"