The successful eradicaiton of rodents and rabbits from Australia's Macquarie Island was an example in the study of where effective conservation interventions relieved the threat load on Australia's threatened bird taxa. A grey-headed Albatross on Macquarie Island; photo by Melanie Wells

Stephen Garnett (Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Australia) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Emu - Austral Ornithology a review of the projected impact of threats and the degree to which their management is executed for all threats to Australia’s threatened bird species in the decade between 2010 and 2020.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Most biodiversity monitoring globally tends to concentrate on trends in species’ populations and ranges rather than on threats and their management. Here we review the estimated impact of threats and the extent to which their management is understood and implemented for all threats to all Australian threatened bird taxa. The assessment reports the situation in 2020 and how this differs from 2010. The most marked finding was that the impact of climate change has increased greatly over the last decade, and now surpasses invasive species as the threat imposing the heaviest threat load. Climate change has driven recent massive population declines from increased temperatures in tropical montane rainforests and from fire. For both direct climate change impacts and fire management, progress in understanding how to relieve the threats has been slow and patchy. Consequently, little effective management has occurred. By comparison, our analysis showed that the single successful campaign to eradicate introduced mammals from Macquarie Island relieved the total threat load on Australian threatened birds by 5%, and more than halved the load on the birds from oceanic islands. Protection or rehabilitation of habitat, particularly on islands, has also delivered measurable benefit as have, in the longer term, controls on longline fishing. Our approach can be used with other taxonomic groups to understand progress in research and management and to allow quantification of potential benefits from proposed actions, such as the national threatened species plan.”

Reference:

Garnett, S.T., Woinarski, J. C. Z., Baker, G. B., et al. (2024) Monitoring threats to Australian threatened birds: climate change was the biggest threat in 2020 with minimal progress on its management, Emu - Austral Ornithology, 124:1, 37-54, DOI: 10.1080/01584197.2023.2291144

06 March 2024

Verena Gill on an aerial survey for Beluga Whales in Alaskan waters

Verena Gill currently works at the Alaska Region of NOAA Fisheries’ Protected Resources Division as the supervisor of the Marine Mammals Conservation Branch.  For a number of years, she has been tirelessly trawling the scientific literature and corresponding with authors to put together a monthly list of publications on seabirds and sending it out to subscribers via a listserv of the Pacific Seabird Group (which last month held its 51st Annual Meeting).  ACAP Latest News has regularly used her lists to feature papers on procellariiform seabirds, concentrating on those about ACAP-listed albatrosses and petrels, thus saving me, and now a colleague, hours of work spent on our own trawling.

Verena has now retired from putting together the free monthly service and writes “Here are the seabird related papers for February 2024.  I'm afraid this will be my final compilation.  As you can imagine it takes a fair bit of time to put these together as I comb through journal [tables of contents] every month in the wee hours.  So it's time for me to get more sleep and finish up some of my own papers that have been lingering way too long.  And I might just get to Nordic ski (my happy place) a bit more too.  Thank you to everyone [who] has sent their citations in.  You are superstars putting all this great science out.  I have enjoyed reading a lot of these manuscripts and engaging in stimulating discussions with many of you.”

Shy Albatrosses, photograph by Kris Carlyon

Her final list contains two papers by Claire Mason (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Battery Point, Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues on the Near Threatened Shy Albatross Thalassarche cauta, both of which had so far escaped my own attention to the literature, as has Claire’s PhD thesis, posted only a few days ago..  One of her publications , entitled “Shy albatross Thalassarche cauta chick mortality and heat stress in a temperate climate” appears as an “advance abstract” in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.  The open-access paper will appear within a themed issue “How do marine heatwaves impact seabirds?” along with 12 other publications.  A timely subject as anthropogenic climate change remorselessly warms our planet.

So, a big thank you from me and from everyone in the ACAP Secretariat to Verena Gill for her tireless service to the global community of marine ornithologists.  Not everyone who labours for our collective good does so in the public eye.  Enjoy the skiing, and the Belugas, Verena!

References:

Mason C. 2023.  Shy Albatross Thalassarche cauta Conservation under Climate Change.  PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, Hobart.  135 pp.

Mason, C., Hobday, A.J., Lea M.-A. & Alderman, R. 2023.  Individual consistency in the localised foraging behaviour of shy albatross (Thalassarche cauta). Ecology and Evolution 13: e10644.

Mason^, C., Hobday, A.J., Alderman, R. & Lea^, M.-A. 2024.  Shy albatross Thalassarche cauta chick mortality and heat stress in a temperate climate.  Marine Ecology Progress Series doi.org/10.3354/meps14494.

Note both Claire Mason’s journal publications will be fully featured in upcoming posts to ACAP Latest News.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 05 March 2024

A Wandering Albatross on Kerguelen

Pierrick Blanchard (Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité et l’Environnement (CRBE), Université de Toulouse, France) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Ecological Society of America on the findings of a field experiment on the effect of  feral cats on Wandering Albatrosses on the main island (Grande Terre) of the Kerguelen Islands.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Invasive alien species are a major threat to seabird species, and the number of impacted species is still increasing. A recent study revealed for the first time that feral cats predated a large albatross species and that without cat control, some albatross populations would markedly decline. We examined this new predator–prey system by individually monitoring known-age wandering albatross chicks with camera traps in a colony experimentally divided into zones with and without cat control. Our design allowed us to investigate how cat control influenced cat abundance and how this in turn influenced the probability for a chick to be predated by a cat. After cat controls, cat abundance was lower in controlled zones than in uncontrolled zones, while a survival analysis showed that the probability for a chick to die from cat predation depended on the zone but not on cat abundance. Our monitoring also provided a fine-scale investigation of the various sources of chick mortality. In addition to cat predation (24% of mortality overall), our data documented predation by giant petrels, for the first time in Kerguelen, and revealed a strong and unexpected effect of nest flooding on chick mortality. Overall, our results underline the need for future studies investigating interindividual variability in cat diet and spatial ecology.”

Reference

Blanchard, P., Delord, K., Bodin, A., Guille, K., Getti, T., and Barbraud, C. 2024. “Impact and Control of Feral Cats Preying on Wandering Albatrosses: Insights from a Field Experiment.” Ecosphere  15(2): e4792. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4792

4 March 2024

Top: The banner created by Marion Schön for ABUN Project #47 “Marine Protected Areas”
Bottom: Artworks (L-R): George and Geraldine, Short-tailed Albatrosses by Flávia F. Barreto from a photo by J Plissner; Short-tailed Albatross chick by Marion Schön from a photo by Jonathan Plissner; “All you need is love" - and zumba!” Short-tailed Albatrosses by Di Roberts

The first artworks for ABUN Project #47 under the theme, “Marine Protected Areas – Safeguarding our Oceans” have been created in support of this year's World Albatross Day to be celebrated on 19 June. By focusing on the connection between albatrosses and the ocean, this year’s World Albatross Day hopes to highlight how Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can help improve the conservation status of these magnificent birds. 

Short-tailed Albatross by Doug Hiser

The establishment of MPAs can assist in improving the conservation status of albatrosses through the protection of the immediate surrounds of their breeding localities and key regions across their migratory ranges, and through the management of activities permitted within them, such as fishing. 

New Zealand’s Near Threatened Buller's Albatross Thalassarche bulleri and the Vulnerable Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus have been chosen as the featured species for WAD2024. 

Artworks from top left (clockwise): George and Geraldine Short-tailed Albatrosses by M Lucia Bendasoli; “And then they said ...!'  wait, no way!” Buller's Albatrosses by Ellyn Bousman Lentz; Buller’s Albatross by Peter Ward from a photo by Enzo M Reyes; George Short-tailed Albatross by Judith Mackay from a photo by Jon Plissner; “Will you be mine?” Buller's Albatrosses by Ellyn Bousman Lentz; “The guiding heart” Buller’s Albatross by Virginia Nicol from photos by Dominique Filipino and Paul Sagar

An official World Albatross Day poster in ACAP’s three official languages of English, French and Spanish will be released in the coming weeks and will be made available at high resolution to download at the ACAP website. 

ABUN Project #47, will run until 31 March and is the fifth collaboration between ACAP and Artists and Biologists Unite for Nature in support of World Albatross Day.

1 February 2024