The Puffin Plan

*** Winner of the 2021 Gold Benjamin Franklin Award for Children’s Non-Fiction as as well as the Outstanding Book Award from the National Association of Black Journalists

“Ornithologist Kress and his team restore puffins to Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock. When Kress became a birdlife instructor at Maine’s Hog Island Audubon Camp in 1969, the seabird biologist discovered that puffins once nested on nearby Eastern Egg Rock. Overhunting of their feathers for hats in the 1800s led to their disappearance. Realizing that humans had a responsibility to save these colorfully beaked birds, Kress developed a plan. Kress and journalist co-author Jackson chronicle what came to be known as Project Puffin. Starting with six puffin chicks from Newfoundland, Canada, in 1973, Kress and his team spent years figuring out ways to make Eastern Egg Rock a viable nesting location. Rather than bog readers down in minutiae, the conversational narrative enhanced by archival photos blends the right amount of logistical details with accounts of harrowing setbacks, constant trial and error, and eventual success. And rather than end there, the authors include a look at climate change and its negative impact on the puffins’ still-fragile ecosystem. They offer readers hope, however, with examples of successful seabird restoration projects around the world, from the rescue of the Short-tailed Albatross on Japan’s Torishima Island to the African Penguin Relocation Project in South Africa. While calling on young people to help, the authors also don’t skirt such controversial topics as gull control (i.e., killing gulls to save puffins). Sure to hatch activism in budding environmentalists.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“Engaging. . . Here is one of the great success stories of conservation. The verdict: Of interest to birders, natural history buffs, New Englanders, conservationists, and environmentalists.”
– Henry T. Armistead, Library Journal 

“A well-told drama.”
– Natural History magazine 

“Restoring puffins to Maine has been a glorious, four-decades obsession for Steve Kress—one underpinned by plenty of stubbornness and grit, as this frank retelling of Project Puffin’s remarkable history makes clear. And thank goodness for that tenacity, because the techniques he pioneered on Eastern Egg Rock are today helping endangered seabirds around the world. This is the compelling story of the messy, uncertain, ultimately uplifting work of real conservation.”
– Scott Weidensaul, author of Living on the Wind