The New York Times: “1,500 Eggs were Waiting to Hatch. Then a Drone Crashed.”

Every April, thousands of elegant terns migrating from Central and South America nest in the sands of the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, one of the last remaining protected coastal wetlands in Southern California.

This year, however, their refuge was no sanctuary. On May 13, a drone crash-landed on their nesting ground, scaring off about 2,500 of the terns. Left behind were about 1,500 eggs, none of which were viable after they were abandoned.

In my 20 years of working with wildlife and in the field, I have never seen such devastation, said Melissa Loebl, an environmental scientist and manager of the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, which encompasses more than 1,300 acres of mud flats, saltwater and freshwater marshes, dunes and other habitats in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Michael Levenson

For as long as they have been around, I have had a vague, irrational aversion of drones, and this kind of incident gives me a valid reason to dislike these gadgets and their reckless owners. As in many other instances, when new technologies become widely available, few can recognize their negative consequences in advance, and put proper regulations in place. In this case, protecting a nature preserve from human disturbance normally involves fences, patrols, and fines for trespassers, but drones easily circumvent those measures. I would imagine a nation-wide registration for drone owners would help here, to quickly track down and punish offenders, otherwise this sort of casual destruction will continue unrestrained.

About 1,500 elegant tern eggs were abandoned by their parents after a drone crashed on a nesting island at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach, Calif. California Department of Fish and Wildlife