From zero to 756 pairs: the Solent's sandwich terns are back from the brink

In 2022, bird flu emptied the sandwich tern colony at Pagham Harbour in West Sussex completely — not a single pair stayed. This summer, after three years of patient work by RSPB staff and volunteers, 756 breeding pairs raised 570 fledglings there, one of the largest colonies ever recorded in the Solent. The recovery was built by hand: fences against foxes, patrols, rat monitoring, cleared nesting ground and floating rafts across 52,000 hectares (128,000 acres) of coast. The neighbours are thriving too — black-headed gull fledglings jumped from 51 last year to 504, little terns rose from 21 to 34, and 18 pairs of avocets nested on newly built islands. As senior project manager Wez Smith put it, the situation has begun to 'tern' around.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program