An adult Black Petrel with its downy chick, photograph by George Hobson

“High on the slopes of Hirakimata [Mount Hobson] on Aotea Great Barrier Island, something remarkable is happening.  In burrows tucked beneath forest roots and moss, tākoketai Black Petrel chicks are hatching.  These downy youngsters, born in January and February 2026, represent both hope and uncertainty for one of Aotearoa’s most threatened seabirds.”A Vulnerable Black Petrel Procellaria parkinsoni fledgling on Great Barrier Island in May 2019, photograph by ‘Biz’ Bell

“With only around 5000 breeding pairs remaining, the tākoketai is one of our most at-risk seabirds, facing threats from fishing bycatch and habitat loss.  In April, as part of the largest Black Petrel tracking study ever undertaken, satellite trackers will be placed on fledglings before they leave Aotea, revealing where young birds spend their crucial first few months at sea.

Read the whole article from Live Ocean’s Impact Director Hannah Prior and Project Manager Elaine Harris here.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 10 March 2026

Sooty Shearwater, photograph by the West Coast Penguin Trust

The Kapiti Island Nature Reserve lies off the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.  It is open to the public via organized tours and is free of introduced predators (rats were eradicated in 1996).  However, its small population of Near Threatened Sooty Shearwaters Ardeanna grisea is threatened by the Vulnerable (and equally protected) Weka Gallirallus australis that preys on its eggs and chicks, leading to a conservation quandary.  Now, Information from the December 2025 online newsletter of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand and a video show that plans are afoot.

Saving the Titi Colony from Extinction on Kapiti Island

“We are incredibly excited to announce our partnership with @kapitiicecream to support the @docgovtnz's project to Save the Titi Colony from Extinction on Kapiti Island, New Zealand. Titi or Sooty Shearwater are a taonga (treasure) to local iwi and are under threat from another Taonga (and native species), the weka bird.  The Department of Conservation is working on a 3-year project to save the colony which is on the brink of collapse.  This project will identify ways to reduce predation by weka and experiment with novel exclusion methods, supported by robust monitoring of nesting success over several seasons.  At the same time, it explores the indigenous knowledge about each of these species, their history on Kāpiti and how that Mātauranga Māori can guide long term management.”

Read an earlier article in ACAP Latest News on the conservation problem on Kapiti here (and see details of an earlier exclusion fence with escape ramps here).

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 04 March 2026

A Manx Shearwater chick outside its burrow, photograph by Jaclyn Pearson

Jason Matthiopoulos (School of Biodiversity, University of Glasgow, UK) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Endangered Species Research on the population dynamics  of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus on the Scottish island of Rum in relation to planned offshore wind farm developments.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“The Isle of Rum (Scotland) holds ~30% of the world’s Manx shearwater population. The status and vulnerability of this internationally important and remote population are currently in question, mainly because of variations in field survey methodologies used on Rum across the years. This is particularly urgent in light of proposed offshore wind farm developments in the area. Here, we aimed to reconstruct population and demographic trends and quantify future sensitivities using a Bayesian state-space model. Fitting the model to simulated data of a similar nature and extent as the real data confirmed our ability to retrieve hidden parameters and reconstruct latent population trends in partially observed or wholly unobserved demographic time series. Applying these methods to the real data revealed that the population has been increasing since the 1980s but may now be starting to plateau. We extended the temporal horizon to a 100 yr forecast and ran several counterfactual scenarios relating to anthropogenic impacts on adult mortality and fecundity. These experiments indicated that the population is robust to strong pulse perturbations (e.g. wind farm construction or epidemic outbreaks), but vulnerable to small, sustained perturbations in adult survival (e.g. low-level mortality due to nearby wind farm operation). By integrating different data types collected by varying field methods over mismatched time windows, we have gained valuable insights into the status of this difficult-to-monitor species. Impact assessments for planned offshore wind developments around Rum should focus on collision and displacement costs to provisioning adults borne by wind farm operation (rather than construction).”

Reference:

Matthiopoulos, J., Thompson, K., Watt, L., O’Brien, S. & Furness, R.[W.] 2025.  Reconstructing and forecasting the dynamics of an internationally important population of Manx shearwaters. Endangered Species Research 56: 291-303.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 06 March 2026

Graphical abstract from the publication

Mikinley Weaver (Hawaiʻi Pacific University, Waimanalo, Hawaii, USA) and colleagues have published in the journal Parasitology Internatonal on lice loads in Wedge-tailed Shearwaters Ardenna pacifica from the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Ectoparasites were collected from 35 live Ardenna pacifica Gmelin chicks (wedge-tailed shearwaters) in October and November 2022 using a fumigant and plastic bag collection method.  Additionally, 206 naturally-deceased post-fledging grounded birds were sampled opportunistically over eight years (2015–2023), with fledglings collected during the fledging season (November – December) and adults collected during the breeding season (May – October).  Eight species of Phthiraptera were documented in samples from these birds.  While four species (Halipeurus mirabilis Thompson, Trabeculus hexakon Waterson, Austromenopon paululum (Kellogg & Chapman), and Naubates harrisoni Bedford) were present on chicks that had fledged and subsequently “fallen out”, only H. mirabilis was present on chicks that had not yet fledged. Saemundssonia puellula Timmermann, and Longimenopon puffinus Thompson, were only collected from adult fallout birds in the spring.  Of the recorded ectoparasites, four species (H. mirabilis, T. hexakon, A. paululum, and N. harrisoni) constituted a species assemblage that did not significantly vary from year to year.  Lice abundance and diversity varied across bird age classes (pre-fledging chicks, fledged chicks, adults), but a significant increase in lice abundance during 2015 coincided with a major El Niño event, suggesting that the ectoparasite loads may be affected by external conditions such as air temperature.  There was also a significant increase in lice prevalence between pre-fledging and fledged chicks, which likely coincided with the lice hatching.  These results underscore the consistency of lice assemblages on A. pacifica, while highlighting the influence of endogenous (e.g., bird life history) and exogenous (e.g., weather) ecological factors.”

Reference:

Weaver, M.D., Brown, S.M. & Hyrenbach, K.D. 2026.  The traveling insects: ectoparasite records on Hawaiian wedge-tailed shearwaters, Ardenna pacifica, with a focus on Phthiraptera,  Parasitology International 110, 103142. doi.org/10.1016/j.parint.2025.103142.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 05 March 2026