OH Birders-

I haven't seen any news here about a project that you all might be interested in, so I'm going to share.

As part of work being done at the Ashtabula River harbor, the US Army Corp of Engineers is going to install a set of specially designed cement blocks intended to be used as nesting platforms for Least Terns.

From the press release:

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The Corps of Engineers is starting construction this month on a common tern nesting habitat demonstration project as part of maintenance repairs on a section of the Ashtabula Harbor east breakwater. The project is being funded by the US EPA through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and executed in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the US EPA Great Lakes National Program Office.

The project is part of research being conducted by the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, MS, in the context of the larger Engineering With Nature and Great Lakes Green Breakwaters initiatives. Construction is being performed by the crew of the Buffalo District repair fleet based in Cleveland, OH. It is made up of the Derrickboat McCauley, Tug Cheraw, Tug Donlon, and several work barges.

"This project is intended to demonstrate how the Corps can incorporate additional environmental or social benefits into our coastal infrastructure with little additional cost as part of our ongoing maintenance program," said Buffalo District commander Lt. Col. Owen J. Beaudoin. "It is also an opportunity to bring the Common Tern back to the Ashtabula area where it was once common locally, but has not been recorded as nesting in the area for decades."
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The breakwater site is the eastern one seen in this Google Map view:
http://goo.gl/maps/n0FxU

Here's a link to the pdf of the USCAE press release:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43439709/Ashtabula_USACE.pdf

Here are some photos of the structures staged on land prior to installation:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43439709/NestingUnitsTopView.JPG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43439709/NestingUnitsStaged.JPG
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43439709/NestingUnitCloseUp.JPG

I'm told the red logo is for Mack Industries, the maker of the precast blocks.

If this gets completed this fall, it should be interesting to see what happens next spring.

August Froehlich
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