For more than half a century, biologists have braved the rugged conditions on the wind-swept Farallon Islands to catalog the comings and goings of dwindling bird populations, migrating whales and a vast array of other species, including white sharks.
Scientists and research volunteers are there 365 days a year, and their constant presence is crucial to maintaining the detailed record of environmental intelligence that they have been gathering since 1968.
But federal budget cuts may soon force Point Blue Conversation Science, the Petaluma-based nonprofit that runs the research station, to cut back its presence to just half a year. Fifty percent of the station’s $600,000 budget comes from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which will stop funding the year-round program next year.
“We’ve had a working partnership agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 1972,” said Pete Warzybok, Point Blue’s Farallon program leader. “It has always provided at least a portion of our budget for doing baseline monitoring and keeping the field station operational. Losing that will have a major impact on the program.”
The Farallon Islands National Refuge is one of several national wildlife refuges facing cuts.
“We’re in a constrained budget environment, and we’re working to make judicious use of our resources,” Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Jackie D’Almeida said.
In addition to forcing cuts, scarce federal funding has resulted in a backlog of $8 million in deferred maintenance, she said.
“Point Blue and the service are working on a plan to prioritize management activities on the islands and focus on critical seasonal activities,” she added.
Unless Point Blue can close the gap with funding from donors, it will be forced to restrict its monitoring activities to the spring and summer, said Jaime Jahncke, director of Point Blue’s California Current Group.
Although Point Blue does the bulk of its bird migration monitoring during those months, it tracks birds, whales, elephant seals and great white sharks during the fall and winter, providing valuable information to state and federal agencies in charge of managing fisheries and ships in the refuge.
Data generated by the nonprofit is important in assessing the appropriate timing and length of salmon and crab fishing seasons and alerting ships to slow down when large numbers of whales are present.
“Without us there, that data goes away,” Mr. Jahncke said. “There’s nothing they can do.”
Data collected by Point Blue scientists resulted in legislation banning gillnets, which were entangling seabirds, and prompted legal protections of white sharks in 1993.
Six to eight researchers are typically working on the island, which is off limits to other visitors. They receive supplies every couple of weeks from a boat that must be hoisted onto the island by a crane because landing on the steep and rocky shore is too dangerous.
Their year-round presence deters unauthorized visitors from disturbing the bird populations that make their home there, including species of concern such as ashy storm petrels, Cassin’s auklets and Brandt’s cormorants.
“Over a half-million seabirds breed on the main island and the smaller islands associated with it,” Mr. Warzybok said. “We monitor their breeding success, population size and diet to help us understand what is happening in the marine environment and how the birds are being impacted.”
The wildlife service carries the management responsibility for the islands, but Point Blue takes the lead on research and the day-to-day upkeep of the handful of aging structures, which once served as a Coast Guard station. A lighthouse atop Southeast Farallon—the largest island in the craggy, 211-acre archipelago—was built in 1855. For 117 years, until the lighthouse was automated in 1972, lighthouse keepers and their families lived on the island.
The refuge hosts the largest colony of nesting seabirds in the continental United States outside of Alaska, and the Point Blue team is often the first to notice significant shifts in populations. After a precipitous decline in common murres, which were drowning after becoming entangled in gillnets, the bird has made a remarkable comeback, with its population growing from about 20,000 to more than 350,000.
“It’s been a wonderful recovery over the years, and it’s really a testament to the ability of nature to bounce back if you protect it from harm, restore habitat and give it a chance,” Mr. Warzybok said.
Many environmental leaders have cut their teeth at Point Blue’s observation station in the Farallones, including Gerry McChesney, the refuge manager.
“I like to think of the Farallones as a natural biological laboratory,” said Mr. McChesney, who began his career as an intern with Point Blue. “Incredible science is being done in the refuge. So many different species use the islands for breeding and for resting during migration. We have seabirds, we have marine mammals, we have land birds, waterbirds and endemic species that are found nowhere else.”
Data gathered by Point Blue is particularly useful in understanding changing marine conditions in the age of climate change. Collecting that information consistently over time is essential, Mr. McChesney said.
“We’re going to have to reduce our activities on the island because we’re just simply not going to have the resources to do it,” he said. “A lot of this great work is not going to get done. We’re going to be very constrained.”