CANNON BEACH — John Underwood became fascinated with tufted puffins during his visits to Cannon Beach as a child. He remembers watching the iconic seabirds swarm Haystack Rock by the hundreds.

In 2022, there were 74 — the lowest count since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began tracking the population.

Underwood, a board member of Friends of Haystack Rock, became involved with the stewardship organization out of a desire to stop the decline.

Haystack Rock is a destination for, and one of the few places, people can get close to puffins.

“I have grandchildren,” Underwood said. “And I want my grandchildren to be able to go down there with their children and see those birds on that rock.”

After numerous efforts, which has included funding research, the group is hopeful about a new partnership with the National Audubon Society, an environmental nonprofit focused on the conservation of birds and their habitats.

About 50 years ago, the Audubon society started Project Puffin in Maine, which reintroduced Atlantic puffins to colonies off the coast that had disappeared as a result of hunting and egg poaching in the late 1800s.

Over the past year, Underwood said Friends of Haystack Rock and the Audubon society have worked to start a similar program on the West Coast.

After successful fundraising for the program, Friends of Haystack Rock signed a memorandum of understanding with the audubon society this summer. Audubon is actively recruiting a coordinator that will specifically focus on tufted puffins for the next two years and, along with a steering committee, to identify strategies.

Underwood hopes that by bringing experts to the table and increasing coordination, they can figure out how to bring puffins back to a viable population.

“It’s encouraging that we’ve gotten the attention of a lot of people,” he said. “But we just hope we’re not too late.”

Julie Hill-Gabriel, the Audubon Society’s interim vice president of coastal conservation and vice president of water conservation, said the organization sees the work as a strategic next step.

“We’re trying to find really strategic approaches like this and identify what the areas are where we think there are conservation actions that can have the most impact, knowing that climate change is going to continue to be a driver of habitat change, of affecting species,” she said. “We do feel like there are enough opportunities in that with that additional convening of experts, with having a dedicated staff person that we really have a big potential to make a difference.”

In a study published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year, scientists showed a downward trend in puffins in the Gulf of Alaska and a dramatic downward trend in puffins in the California Current, which includes Washington state, Oregon and California. The same study also showed an upward trend of puffins in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

The study said the declines across the California Current and Gulf of Alaska are likely attributed to a variety of factors influencing populations independently and synergistically.

The factors include oil spills, fisheries bycatch and the Japanese mothership driftnet and land-based gillnet fisheries that killed tens of thousands of tufted puffins in the 1980s.

Other factors include the introduction of invasive species at breeding colonies, increasing populations of native predators, like the bald eagle, and warming ocean waters.

Between 1988 and 2008, the Oregon Coast saw a decline in puffin population from thousands to hundreds, according to surveys conducted by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency’s most recent report, published in 2021, estimated a population of 553 in Oregon.

Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge in Tillamook County — the largest known puffin colony along the Oregon Coast — was estimated to have 150 puffins, which is down from previous years.

There were 98 counted at Haystack Rock.

While the 2022 report has yet to be published, Shawn Stephensen, a wildlife biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the count at Haystack Rock dropped to 74 birds — the lowest count since monitoring at the rock began.

“The trend is pretty ugly,” said Angela Benton, the board chairwoman of Friends of Haystack Rock.

She hopes the partnership with the National Audubon Society can help pinpoint specific problems.

Because of the popularity of puffins, Benton said — like a canary in the coal mine — they could help draw attention to problems affecting other seabirds.

“It’s just that it’s easier to care about a charismatic, beautiful, amazing bird that’s in our backyard than some other species that folks have never seen,” she said.