Restoration of Gavia immer (common loon) in Minnesota—2022 annual report

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon mobile drilling platform on April 20, 2010, caused a massive oil spill and injury to natural resources in the Gulf of Mexico. Gavia immer (common loon) were negatively affected from the spill. The Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group funded the project “Restoration of Common Loons in Minnesota” to restore common loons lost to the spill. Here, we report on activities conducted for this project in an eight-county region in Minnesota in calendar year 2022. We identified a subset of territories that were monitored in 2021 as focal territories (n=99) from which multiyear study inferences can ultimately be made. We monitored nonfocal territories on all study lakes as well. We conducted surveys from May 9 to August 12, 2022. At least 1 nest attempt was observed in 68 of 99 focal territories, and a second nest attempt after a failed initial attempt was observed in 17 focal territories. Chicks or other evidence of hatching was observed in 33 of 99 territories. Data collected in 2021 and 2022 for this project are presented in a U.S. Geological Survey data release (https://doi.org/10.5066/P9LA536E). We present no formal data analysis in this report.