About Loon Watch


The following information is from LoonWatch. Please visit their website http://www.northland.edu/loonwatch for more current information.

Volunteers across the state, known as Loon Rangers, are monitoring the success of loons and educating their local communities about sharing their lakes with the enigmatic bird. Loon Rangers are coordinated by LoonWatch, a program of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute at Northland College. For 31 years, these volunteers have collected data about the success of loons on more than 300 lakes, providing an invaluable resource to shape policy and educational efforts.

LoonWatch urges people to appreciate loons from a distance. Ice-out through July is a very important time for loons. They have established their nests, and need all their energy to focus on raising their chicks. It’s tempting to get close to them, but they need their space. You get a much better sense of their natural behavior through binoculars from a few hundred feet away, anyway.

If you are fortunate enough to see a loon,  LoonWatch suggests you stay two hundred feet away to avoid disturbing them, and reduce your wake in areas where you suspect a nest. If you see someone distressing a loon, explaining the loon’s agitation is often enough to resolve the situation. Stacy Craig, program director for LoonWatch, says most cases of loon harassment arise from curiosity, not malice.

“Loons have a lot of pressures on them,” says Craig. “Beyond watching your wake, keeping pets away from nests, using lead-free tackle and respecting their nesting and chick rearing space can make a big difference in chick survival and continued loon presence on the lake.”

Loons are not only essential characters on Northern Wisconsin lakes, they are also an ideal indicator species for lake health, part of the reason LoonWatch and Loon Rangers work so hard to document them.

“Because of the loon’s niche -they typically return to the same lakes year after year- they give us an impression of lake health and changes over the long term,” says Craig. “Loons bioaccumulate toxins such as mercury. By studying them and watching reproductive outcomes, we can understand how pollution and other changes to their environment affect them.”

LoonWatch is always looking for more volunteers; the only requirement is that they visit a particular lake often. If you do not have someone monitoring loons on a lake that you live on or frequently visit, please consider volunteering. Even if the lake only has sporadic loon populations, the data collected helps paint a complete picture of loon health. Training opportunities held each spring help volunteers learn more about loon monitoring. Anyone interested in becoming a Loon Ranger or learning more about LoonWatch should visit http://www.northland.edu/loonwatch.

Though our primary focus is Wisconsin, our education and research activities extend to Upper Great Lakes region, such as Michigan and Minnesota. We also lend support to North American conservation efforts by working with loon conservation organizations across the United States and Canada.

LoonWatch poster

For more information about LoonWatch, the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, Northland College or their affiliated programs, contact Stacy Craig at (715) 682-1220 or scraig@northland.edu or visit http://www.northland.edu/loonwatch.
Management Activities listed on their Profile and select Monitoring - Loons/Frogs.