By Paul Homewood
Thrusting your hand into an underground puffin burrow is not an activity to be taken lightly. For a start, should the protective homeowner be present there is every chance of a nasty nip.
Take a wrong turn and you could also find yourself knuckle-deep in puffin guano because the ultra-hygienic birds like to dig a separate “lavatory” tunnel.
But for the past few weeks, that is what National Trust rangers on the Farne Islands in Northumberland have been braving during their five-yearly puffin census. The rangers are not just looking for adult birds, but also for their eggs and pufflings.
So far the news has been bleak. The puffins arrived four weeks later than usual and initial estimates suggest the number of breeding pairs has fallen by 12 per cent.
A combination of climate change, overfishing, plastic pollution and extreme weather has left the little seabirds struggling for survival.
It means thousands of birds have vanished since the last count in 2013, with just 35,000 breeding pairs probably remaining. At the current rate of decline, conservationists forecast that the entire colony could vanish within 50 years, an alarming trend that is being seen across Britain.
Puffin numbers on the Farne Islands have been monitored since 1939, when just 3,000 pairs were recorded, but numbers rose steadily until 2008, when the population declined by a third from 55,674 to 36,835.
The last census showed a slight improvement with numbers rising to 39,962 breeding pairs. But the trust is expecting a new count of around 35,000 and is now planning annual monitoring.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/23/uk-puffins-may-go-way-dodo-fears-extinction-50-years/
As I have pointed out before, there is no evidence that “climate change” has had anything at all to do with changes in puffin populations.
On the contrary, there is ample evidence that industrial scale fishing of sand eels, the puffins’ favourite food, has led to population decline. On Skomer Island, off the Pembrokeshire coast, puffins have been thriving in recent years. In 2009, for instance, the Telegraph itself reported that numbers had increased to 13500, from 10000 the previous year. Jo Milborrow, from the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, said at the time:
"We’re delighted that the numbers keep growing but we don’t really know why. "We think it may be because of the increased numbers of sandeels which the puffins feed on. “
Since 2009, puffin numbers have continued to rise, with last year’s count recording 25000 birds, an increase of 12% from 2016.
The difference between Skomer and the Farne Islands is that sand eel fishing only takes place at scale in the North Sea.
In any event, the numbers that the Telegraph report rather undermine the whole climate change argument. If numbers rose from 3000 in 1939, to 55000 in 2003, when supposedly we have had global warming, how can it now be responsible for a decline?
As you would expect, the comments in the Telegraph are universally negative, and this one rather sums it all up:
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May 24, 2018 at 06:24AM
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