Vanished Texas bird island is back, with 2,500 pairs of birds

Dickinson Bay lost its charm over the decades. The small estuarine pocket on Galveston Bay's western shore once hosted thriving colonies of waterbirds on three dredged islands. But then the islands completely vanished. During the 1980s and 1990s, subsidence, erosion, and a string of tropical storms swept the islands beneath the water. And with them went crucial nesting grounds for terns, herons, pelicans, and gulls. But then people who cared about them brought them back.How Galveston Bay brought its birds backIn the 1930s, three islands were built in Dickinson Bay, using material dredged from the channel. But by the 1990s, all three islands had disappeared. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (Service) Coastal Program, which has long monitored the colonial waterbirds, saw a chance to restore the lost habitat. So, in the early 2000s, the Texas Coastal Program and the Galveston Bay restoration community started to look at ways to restore the islands of Dickinson Bay.In 2005 came the first glimmer of hope, when the Galveston Bay Foundation attempted to reconstruct the first of the three lost islands. Dickinson Bay Island I was created with approximately two acres of nesting space. Wi...