Becky Harris, Ellen Jedrey – Post-breeding Staging Roseate Terns: Cape Cod and Nantucket are Critical Habitats

As Director of MassAudubon’s Coastal Waterbird Program, Becky Harris oversees the monitoring, management and protection of beach nesting birds at over 100 sites throughout southeastern Massachusetts. She also holds an adjunct faculty position at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in the Center for Conservation Medicine.

Before coming to Mass Audubon in 2006, she founded and coordinated the Seabird Ecological Assessment Network (SEANET), a long-term collaborative effort that uses seabirds as indicators of marine and coastal ecosystem health. It monitors mortality and assesses threats to seabirds and their habitats in the northeast US and Atlantic Canada.

Becky received her BA in biology from Drew University in 1995 (summa cum laude) and a PhD in biology at Tufs. Her thesis research focused on the effects of forestry practices on Black-throated Blue Warblers in Maine. She worked for the National Audubon Society Seabird Restoration Project (Project Puffin) on islands of the coast of Maine for three years, including one season as Island Supervisor on Matinicus Rock where her love of seabirds was fostered. She serves on the council of the Waterbird Society and has served on the board of the New England Society for Conservation Biology.

Ellen Jedrey, Assistant Director of the MassAudubon Coastal Waterbird Program since 2004, is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire with a BSc in Wildlife Management.

Ellen, who grew up in the coastal town of Hampton, NH, began working with coastal birds on Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge in 2000. It was there that she developed a strong passion for coastal ecology and the conservation of coastal ecosystems. During the past ten years, she has been fortunate to work with coastal birds on projects such as MassAudubon’s aerial surveys for Cape Wind and with Piping Plover and Least Tern management across the Cape and the Islands.