Oh look, a BIRD!
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by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Dave Shirley
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Date
…but not just any bird. A puffin. What’s a puffin, you ask? You can see them in action in this video from explore.org (and it’s from this video we got our blog post's accomanying image).
We’d like to share the story of Project Puffin, which was featured this Sunday in The Boston Globe Magazine, and is an example of a Green By Definition1 project, and one which also demonstrates that projects can have a long - in this case - nearly unlimited - life span, if necessary.
In fact, when we contacted the project team, they indicated that although it’s a project by name, they’ve had the realization that ongoing care is a part of the deal, so it really doesn’t have an end date. I suppose that we in the project management world would call it a projeration- a combination of a project and an operation.
The story of Project Puffin – or at least its inception, as well as the introduction to the bird itself, is captured by the first part of the story, written by Stephen Kress, project director.
"The Atlantic puffin’s black-and-white plumage, which mimics a friar’s robes, prompted 18th-century zoologists to name it Fratercula arctica, “little brother of the north.” Thanks to its brilliant, clownish red-orange-and-yellow bill, the puffin was once known as the sea parrot. Many today consider the puffin to be the most endearing bird of the North Atlantic. Although never listed as endangered, Atlantic puffins were plundered in Maine and Canada in the 19th century for food and feathers. The National Audubon Society and I started Project Puffin in 1973 with the knowledge that no seabird has ever been restored to an island where humans had wiped it out."
The project charter was clear: restore this seabird to an island where it had been eliminated by humans.
Fast forward to today:
"On a shoestring budget and against daunting odds, Project Puffin offers proof that individuals can make a difference and that enterprising conservation programs at local levels can have larger benefits to species conservation. Today, more than a thousand puffin pairs are nesting on several Maine islands, and this development has led to a flourishing industry called puffin watching. It is ironic that at the same islands where shooters once used 8-foot-long punt guns to blast seabirds 50 at a time, now the sight of even a single puffin is greeted by cries of delight from boats carrying a hundred or more bird-watchers."
We’ve been coaching project managers to think through the end of their projects to triple-bottom-line benefits. Here’s a project that actually yielded a successful ecological benefit as an outcome, but also provides a social and economic ongoing benefit as well.
The story, however, doesn’t end there…at least not with certainty.
Rising temperatures may undo some of the good work of this project.
To quote the article again:
“THE SUMMER OF 2012 saw the warmest waters ever recorded in the Gulf of Maine and has changed my thinking that all’s well along the Maine coast. Although puffins seem to have dodged climate effects until recently, other species have suggested that change has been underway for at least the past decade. At least 14 fish stocks have shifted northward in New England, and some of these have also moved into deeper water where they are out of reach of puffins.”
Indeed, the overall trend is not good for the puffin population.
But as Kress says, “nature is complex, and the lessons are in the details”.
The 2013-2014 winter cold showed how even small changes in temperatures can affect conditions in either direction for the puffin, and in this case, in a positive way.
“Following the cold winter of 2013-2014, the average Gulf of Maine surface temperature dropped by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit from the previous year, bringing it into the high end of the “normal” range. This water temperature combined with the flow from rivers filled with freshwater from heavy, abundant winter snow to create a more typical spring plankton bloom, resulting in ample herring and white hake for puffin chicks throughout the nesting season.”
From our perspective it’s another example how climate change is not the same as weather, and not even a few years’ data can be taken as evidence; one must look at the science, the long-term trends, to understand what is happening holistically and for the longer term.
It goes back to our blog post title, which is supposed to mimic a short-term project thinker with a limited attention span, expemplified by them getting distracted easily... “oh look, a bird”. As project managers we can’t – and shouldn’t - be focused only on what is happening right in front of us, right now. We need to be aware of trends, and we most certainly need to think of our project’s product in the steady state. Project Puffin teaches us that within that long-term thinking lies opportunity – witness the puffin tours (see here and here) that are generating income (economic bottom line) as well as a plain old day of family fun and education (social bottom line) for tourists and residents! And of course, this is in concert with the ecological bottom line of further understanding the environment and supporting the diversity of species.
For Project Puffin, although that one cold year provided some relief and a boost in capability for their puffins, the project itself is still (and indefinitely) underway – and the focus is still on assuring the survival of these birds on these home islands for the population.
Should you want to assist the project, you can find out how to donate here.
1This is a reference from our book, Green Project Management, in which we cover several types of projects along a 'spectrum of green'. You'll just have to get the book to find out more...
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Richard Maltzman
on: April 06, 2015 02:04 PM |
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