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The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is seeking volunteer loon counters for its annual monitoring program. It runs the mornings of June 30 to July 10 and includes more than 600 lakes.

The DNR’s Lori Naumann says the loon count program’s success relies on help from the public.

“We only have four non-game specialists throughout the entire state and that’s a lot of area for most of them to cover. So it would be really helpful to have volunteers that are either already out there or just want to go out and see our state’s favorite bird.”

Naumann said loons are considered a sentinel species, so if anything happens to their numbers it’s cause for concern. She said the state’s loon population has remained stable for the last several decades at around 12,000.

“The loon population over the last couple of years has dipped a little bit,” Naumann said, “and so that makes it even more important for us to be gathering this data and to have volunteers help us with collecting the data.”

This is the 30th anniversary of the program. For more information or to sign up visit the Minnesota Loon Monitoring webpage.