World Heritage status for Mexico’s Revillagigedo Islands will help protect their Laysan Albatross and Townsend’s Shearwater populations

The Committee of the World Heritage Convention (formally the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted in 1972) has added the Archipiélgo de Revillagigedo (Revillagigedo Islands), a group of four Mexican islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean, as a natural Site to the World Heritage List under Criteria (vii), (ix) and (x) during its 40th Session in Istanbul, Turkey this month (click here).

The island group is home to the endemic and Critically Endangered Townsend’s Shearwater Puffinus auricularis, now restricted to Socorro Island, and to small populations of ACAP-listed and Near Threatened Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis on Clarión and San Benedicto Islands.

A Laysan Albatross hatches its egg on Clarión Island, photograph by Ross Wanless

The Reserva de la Biosfera Archipiélgo de Revillagigedo was established in 1994 and was designated as a Ramsar Wetland Site of International Importance (No. 1537) in 2004.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 July 2016