โšกToday

Seabird numbers bounce back on England's south coast

The Guardian 19 October 2026 2 min read

โฎ BeforeIn 2022 bird flu wiped out the sandwich tern colony at Pagham harbour.
โœ… NowThree years later the colony has 756 breeding pairs.

In short

  • A colony of sandwich terns at Pagham harbour, West Sussex, was wiped out by bird flu in 2022.
  • Numbers rose from zero to 756 breeding pairs in three years.
  • RSPB conservation work in the Solent has helped terns, gulls, plovers and oystercatchers recover.

Why the Good News Desk likes this one

Bird flu wiped out a whole tern colony at Pagham harbour in 2022, which made the recovery look unlikely. Three years of conservation work by the RSPB in the Solent has brought back hundreds of breeding pairs. The source reports recovery across several seabird species in the region.

Advertisement

From The Guardian

Conservation work by RSPB has led to recovery of terns, gulls, plovers and oystercatchers on Englandโ€™s south coast The colony of sandwich terns nesting at Pagham harbour, West Sussex, was completely wiped out by bird flu in 2022. But numbers have bounced back from zero to 756 breeding pairs in just three years after conservation work in the Solent. Continue reading...

Read the full story at The Guardian Opens the publisher's site in a new tab.

Ask this story

Answers come only from the material behind this story, with a link to the source.

More like this

Advertisement
AdMobile anchor