Buller’s Albatross, endemic to New Zealand, by Rosa Venturi of Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN) for World Albatross Day, 19 June 2024, after a photograph by Ross Wheeler

The Eighth Session of ACAP's Meeting of the Parties (MoP8) will be held in the Dunedin Leisure Lodge, Dunedin, New Zealand over 19-23 May 2025.  The session’s Meeting Documents, including a provisional agenda, and Information Papers are now freely available for downloading and consultation on this website.

ACAP Secretariat, 26 March 2025

Victims of bright lights and a vehicle.  A Hutton’s Shearwater is killed on a Kaikōura street

Shearwaters, and especially their fledglings, are particularly at risk of being downed by light pollution, notably from bright streetlighting, when they can be hit by vehicles and be vulnerable predators such as feral and domestic cats and dogs (click here).  New Zealand’s Endangered Hutton’s Shearwater Puffinus huttoni is no exception.  The species breeds naturally in only two colonies high up in the mountains of the Seaward Kaikōura Ranges behind the seaside town of Kaikōura on the east coast of South Island, fledglings are downed by bright lights in the town.

The problem: Kaikōura ablaze at night

Hutton’s Shearwaters will get improved protection along Kaikōura streets when the streetlights are changed

Help is now at hand as the work is to begin replacing old-style sodium streetlights with shaded LED ones from next month.  “The new lighting system will improve vision at night for people walking along the road and drivers, by directing light downwards towards the ground, and containing the spill … and it should make it less likely the incoming seabirds will get disoriented and end up in danger on the highway”.  The development follows on from the district’s international dark sky sanctuary accreditation, announced by Dark Sky International in September last year. Read more here.

Ready to fledge. A Hutton's_Shearwater chick, all photographs from the Hutton’s Shearwater Charitable Trust

Read more here.

See a recent post to ACAP Latest News on Hutton’s Shearwater conservation.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 25 March 2025

A breeding Waved Albatross on Isla de La Plata, photograph by Enzo Reyes

Dr Enzo Reyes is leading a pioneering project that aims to use social attraction techniques to bolster the small population of the Critically Endangered Waved Albatrosses Phoebastria irrorata on Isla de La Plata, 41 kilometres offshore from the fishing village of Puerto López on the mainland of Ecuador.  This initiative, the first of its kind for the species, is a collaborative effort involving Enzo Reyes, the Machalilla National Park, the Ecuadorian NGO Equilibrio Azul and the American Bird Conservancy.  The project’s primary goal is to prevent the local extinction of the Waved Albatross colony on La Plata, which represents only a very small percentage of the species’ main population which is based on Isla Española in the Galapagos Islands.

Enzo Reyes and a volunteer band a breeding Waved Albatross in 2023, photograph by Equilibrio Azul

Enzo Reyes writes to ACAP Latest News: “Our objective is to increase colony attendance and reproductive success over time, ultimately establishing La Plata as an insurance population for the species and improving the species’ threatened conservation status, due a decreasing population and both accidental and deliberate capture.  The project was launched in September 2022 with an initial site reconnaissance and bird census.  In 2023, the team banded all the breeding birds in the colony using metal and colour-coded plastic bands for individual identification.  Banding allows us to track returning individuals and detect any new arrivals to the colony. We are also using different colour bands from those used in the Galápagos Islands, enabling us to monitor our birds separately”.

 
Decoys deployed next to the speakers near the main albatross landing area, photograph by Enzo Reyes

Enzo continues “In March 2025 the team deployed 20 albatross decoys, with a follow-up expedition planned for the coming weeks to install an acoustic attraction system.  We are setting up social attraction cues now, as the 2025 breeding season is expected to begin soon.  This timing will help maximise the chances of attracting prospecting or passing birds to La Plata.”

The project has been formally presented to Ecuador’s ACAP representative and to members of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment’s Marine and Coastal Division. Additionally, a workshop will be conducted in the coming weeks to introduce the project to Machalilla National Park Rangers and provide capacity-building training.

Machalilla National Park Ranger, Equilibrio Azul member and volunteer with a speaker during a colony visit in September 2022, photograph by Enzo Reyes

The arid 1200-ha island forms part of the 46 000-ha Machalilla National Park, which includes a 14 430-ha Ramsar Wetland of International Importance (Zona Marina Parque Nacional Machalilla, Site No. 503, designated in 1990).

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 24 March 2025

A Hutton’s Shearwater incubates its egg in an artificial burrow in the Te Rae o Atiu colony, photograph from the Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust

The Endangered Hutton’s Shearwater Puffinus huttoni breeds naturally only in two colonies high up in the mountains of the Seaward Kaikōura Ranges behind the seaside town of Kaikōura on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where they are risk to landslides caused by earthquakes and feral pigs.  Additionally fledglings are downed by bright lights in the town, when they become at risk to cars, cats and dogs alike.  As a consequence, a long-standing effort has been underway over two decades by the Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust to establish a new breeding colony secure within a predator-proof-fence, hand rearing translocated chicks in artificial burrows.

A Hutton’s Shearwater chick close to fledging in the Te Rae o Atiu colony, photograph from the Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust

With fledged birds now returning each year to breed, the Te Rae o Atiu colony on the Kaikōura Peninsula at a low altitude is moving to a more mature stage, although some underweight chicks continue to receive “sardine smoothies” to supplement their natural diet fed to them by their parents.  In the current 2024/25 breeding season as fledging commences this month, the relocation colony is reported as faring well, with “about 90 adult birds returned to the colony, 42 eggs laid and 32 hatching”, of which a record 30 chicks have survived.  The Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust is ambitious: “At the moment it is a very tiny colony, but our plan is that over the next 100 years it grows to a colony of at least 10 000 breeding pairs.”

Slow down for Hutton’s Shearwater fledglings, as a sign along a Kaikōura street requests, photograph from the Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust

The Te Rae o Atiu colony is a partnership between Tukete Charitable Trust, which owns the land, Te Rūnanga o Kaikōura, the Hutton's Shearwater Charitable Trust and the Department of Conservation.

Read a book review on the Hutton’s Shearwater in its mountain home.

John Cooper, Emeritus Information Officer, Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, 21 March 2025