Big Ben on Heard Island, photograph by Barbara Wienecke

ACAP Latest News has previously reported on the presence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Southern Elephant Seals on Australia’s Heard Island, following a summer 2025/26 expedition.  New information on the HPAI virus now comes from its detection in a Gentoo Penguin Pygoscelis papua on Heard.

“Scientists onboard the research vessel RSV Nuyina have returned from a second expedition to Australia’s Heard Island in the remote sub-Antarctic and have confirmed that H5 bird flu is spreading among the island’s wildlife.  The virus was detected in samples from Southern Elephant Seals, Antarctic Fur Seals and Gentoo Penguins. 

At this stage we don’t know how many Gentoo Penguins are affected or whether other bird species on the island have also contracted the virus, owing to the difficulties associated with monitoring species on remote sub-Antarctic islands.   Expedition scientists have reported that they didn’t observe any signs of mass mortality in mammals or birds while they were on the island.  Data from aerial surveys is [sic] currently being analysed by scientists and may reveal a clearer picture about the extent of the outbreak.”

The avian flu has yet to be reported from the three ACAP-listed Black-browed Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris, Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses Phoebetria palpebrata and Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus that breed on Heard Island.

Read the full account here.  Read the Australian Government’s media release here.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 11 March 2026

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