The Kure Atoll Conservancy supports the inauguration of World Albatross Day on 19 June

The Kure Atoll Conservancy is a non-profit foundation dedicated to supporting management programmes that enhance biological diversity, ecosystem health and cultural resources of the Kure Atoll Seabird Sanctuary in the USA’s North-Western Hawaiian Islands.  The NGO works to develop additional funding through proposal writing and donor requests to conduct habitat restoration, pollution prevention, monitoring, education outreach and more.  The contributions of volunteers stationed on the atoll for six-month periods form an essential part of the conservancy’s work (click here).

Kure Atoll (the world's most northerly coral atoll) at the western end of the North-Western Hawaiian Islands supports on its 86-ha Green Island important populations of Black-footed Phoebastria nigripes and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses and of other seabirds, as well as in recent years a single female-female pair of globally Vulnerable Short-tailed Albatrosses P. albatrus.

Black-footed and Laysan Albatrosses on Kure

Kure Atoll’s Short-tailed Albatross pair – both are females that lay infertile eggs

Photographs by Cynthia Vanderlip

Black-footed and Laysan Albatrosses on Kure Atoll

Cynthia Vanderlip, photograph by Kevin Sund

Cynthia Vanderlip is the founder and Executive Director of the Kure Atoll Conservancy.  In 2002 she began supervising the habitat restoration and biological monitoring at Kure Atoll for the Hawaiian Department of Land and Natural Resources.  She writes to ACAP Latest News in support of World Albatross Day: “Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses nesting in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument are living near sea level where climate change is destroying their breeding grounds.  It is time to prepare habitat in Hawaii's high islands and invite them back to live with us where they once thrived.”

The Hawaiian Islands are well served by environmental NGOs which work to conserve seabirds and their island habitats.  Kure Atoll Conservancy joins Friends of Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge (FoHI), Friends of Kauaʻi Wildlife Refuges (FKWR), Friends of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (FOMA) and the Hawaiian Audubon Society (HAS) in this work and in supporting the inauguration of an annual World Albatross Day on 19 June.  Mahalo to all.

With thanks to Cynthia Vanderlip, Kure Biological Field Station Supervisor, Kure Atoll Seabird Sanctuary, State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 28 April 2020