Cornell Cooperative Extension

How do you get a community to care about a bird they may know little about?

Angie Tang ’28, a communication and animal
science student in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, spent her summer as a Cornell Cooperative Extension summer intern at the Cornell
Biological Field Station near Syracuse, helping more people discover the common terns of Oneida Lake.

Angie created educational resources, visited
schools and summer camps, connected with local businesses and helped launch “A Tern in Every Town” — a scavenger hunt featuring 3-D printed tern figurines
placed around the lake.

Through her outreach, Angie reached more than 15,000 people, building awareness of a species whose numbers have declined dramatically and whose nesting habitat continues to shrink. Along the way, she found inspiration in the terns themselves and their determination to keep trying, even after storms destroyed many of their nests.

Thank you to Angie for her work this summer and for her contributions to common tern conservation!

Learn more about her CCE summer internship experience — 🔗