Saving Puget Sound's puffins: Bringing these ocean ambassadors back from the brink

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https://www.kuow.org/stories/saving-puget-sound-puffins-bringing-ocean-ambassadors-back-from-brink

Saving Puget Sound's puffins: Bringing these ocean ambassadors back from the brink

John Ryan
September 30, 2025 / 3:41 pm

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Historically, puffins were throughout Washington state waters, outer coast of Washington, all the way through into the Salish Sea, and up into British Columbia,” said University of Puget Sound seabird biologist Peter Hodum. “Fifty or 70 years ago, you probably could have seen them a lot more easily.”

In 1954, a Walla Walla College biology professor named Ernest Booth recorded tufted puffins on Williamson Rocks. One of the flamboyant seabirds issued its rumbling growl of a call, while a baby puffin — known as a puffling — shrieked its pleas for its parents to bring fish back to their grassy burrow.

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Seabirds like puffins are declining in much of the world. Nearly one in three seabird species is threatened with extinction, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature, making seabirds one of the world’s most threatened types of animal.

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Five miles from the nearest terra firma, low-lying Smith Island sits by itself near the eastern entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The island's lighthouse has crumbled into the sea, and its buildings are abandoned. Smith Island is now a hard-to-reach wildlife refuge, off-limits to humans but welcoming to puffins.

Fross said it's her favorite place on earth.

… more … kuow fm/npr story … listen to a bird growling…