FAQs about the Natural History of the Inside Passage

14. What types of birds live on St. Lazaria Island off of Sitka? What is the origin of the island?

Rising no more than 160 feet above the ocean at the entrance to Sitka Sound, St. Lazaria Island was established as a refuge for seabirds in 1909, became a Wilderness in 1970, and was added to the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge in 1980. St. Lazaria is home to about 250,000 breeding pairs of fork-tailed and Leach's storm petrels, about 4,000 to 5,000 common and thick-billed murres, 1,500 to 2,000 tufted puffin breeding pairs, and about 1,000 breeding pairs of rhinoceros auklets. Other birds that breed on the island include pigeon guillemots, glaucous winged gulls, ancient murrelets, cassin's auklets, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, black oystercatchers, and pelagic cormorants. Well over half a million birds lay their eggs annually on St. Lazaria.

Captain George Dixon called the island Robin Island, but the name provided by Ivan Vasiliev in 1809, St. Lazaria, is most commonly used. St, Lazaria has two low summits, forested with old-growth Sitka spruce, that are connected by a bare saddle, washed by waves at high tide. Cliffs topped with lush grasses fall to the sea. The island is about 3,500 feet long and 1,500 feet at its widest point, approximately 75 acres.

St. Lazaria is comprised of volcanic rocks from the Quaternary Period (1.8 million years ago to the present). Mount Edgecumbe, a 3,201-foot volcanic cone is about 5 miles north on Kruzof Island. Basalt flows extruded from vents on southern Kruzoff Island are considered to be the origin of St. Lazaria.

Humans are asked not to land on the island, and especially not to walk around. Burrows are easily destroyed, and most of the birds will leave their nests when disturbed, allowing the bolder gulls to swoop in and feed on eggs and chicks.