7 Jun 2017
By Gui-Xi Young
A new scientific paper,
spearheaded by our Head of Conservation, Iván Ramírez, has been published in
the peer-reviewed journal ‘Marine Policy’. This study summarises the latest
country-by-country and species-specific analyses of the EU’s marine SPA (Special
Protection Areas) network and offers critical new insights into how well Europe
is protecting its seabirds.
With oceans covering 71% of the
Earth’s surface, it is small wonder that our little home in the solar system is
often called the ‘Blue Planet’. Yet so much of our ocean environment remains a
mystery. But indeed, isn’t that the romance of the big blue expanse that we are
celebrating today, on ‘World
Oceans Day’. A romance that has inspired explorers from Cook to
Cousteau, storytellers from Homer to Hemmingway…and, of course,
conservationists seeking to fathom the depths.
Sadly, on the flip side, the
conservation of marine biodiversity is – in the words of Ivan Ramirez, Head of
Conservation at BirdLife Europe & Central Asia – “a challenging
enterprise”. To say the least. Many marine species are incredibly difficult to
observe or track and there is an inherent lack of data and research resources
in many countries, both here in Europe and globally.
The Desertas petrel…all at sea
Take the Desertas
petrel, for example, a recently split species listed as Vulnerable
because of its small population. Ramírez and his colleagues have been tracking
this species yearly since 2007, and have now accumulated one of the largest
tracking datasets of any gadfly petrel in the world (available at
seabirdtracking.org)! What the tiny loggers attached to the bird’s legs
revealed to them was quite amazing: from its remote breeding grounds in Bugio
Island (Madeira), the Desertas petrel performs a truly Atlantic “tour” with
individuals wintering in as many as five different locations, identified in
Cape Verde, Brazil, Argentina and Florida. Ramírez has also found that these birds
are very loyal to their winter grounds – that is, if a particular bird likes
the Brazilian Coast, it will go there every single year.
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