Excerpt:

Alameda’s nesting colony of endangered California Least Terns has a new government landlord – and a secure home for the future. After years of negotiations, the U.S. Navy transferred 624 acres of its former airfield at Alameda Point to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Monday, November 3.

The transfer includes the former airstrip that was adopted by Least Terns for nesting in the 1970s and that has become the most productive breeding site in California for that species. More than 500 acres – including the area used by the terns – will be preserved as a wildlife reserve.

Golden Gate Audubon and its Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Reserve committee have advocated for decades to protect the terns. In 1976, the earliest known sighting of Least Terns at the Alameda Naval Air Station, only 664 pairs were documented in California after five years of formal monitoring and protection under the Endangered Species Act.