Fingers crossed for all the talk and poster contents to make it into the Trilateral Governmental Conference to be held in May 2026 in Denmark, and thanks so much to both the organisers and attendants of the #ISWSS16 for working hard to make this happen!

Given that there are various other pressures that my team and I have not even studied yet, these results are alarming, and show a need for multi-faceted conservation action, a need shown by many other talks and posters at the symposium as well.

I showed how (i) food availability has shown a steady decrease across the study period, (ii) climate change in the wintering areas relates to a delayed onset of reproduction, (iii) levels of mercury pollution are high, and (iv) avian influenza (#HPAI) has led to a 70% decline of the population.

I was also lucky enough to be given the chance to talk about the Banter See common terns. Although they are protected against two major threats that many birds breeding in the Wadden Sea region face – predation and flooding – other cumulative pressures still affect them too.

Facilitating ‘social distancing’, for example by providing more suitable breeding habitat, such that breeding densities can be reduced (while population size can be maintained to fend off predators), will, however, be key to reduce disease transmission in colony-breeding seabirds such as the terns.

We suggest that daily carcass removal may have kept environmental transmission at bay, and that increased immunity and/or a change of the strain of HPAI may have caused the drop in mortality among the outbreak years.

Thanks for a wonderful collaboration, @matteobeccardi.bsky.social, Justine Bertram @ifv-whv.bsky.social, @pablosalmon.bsky.social, Peter Schupp @icbm-uol.bsky.social, and @oscarvedder.bsky.social!