This year\u2019s count of nesting fulmars on John Muir Trust\u2019s Sandwood Bay estate, near Cape Wrath, have raised fears that 2008 could be another dire year for Scotland\u2019s seabirds. Only 261 nesting pairs were counted on the cliffs that once supported over 700 pairs, representing a decline of around 60% in ten years. The Trust has been counting breeding Fulmars, a key indicator species for the health of North Sea, on the same three mile stretch of cliffs between Sandwood Bay and Sheigra since 1997. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur surveys in both 2008 and 2007 have recorded the lowest Fulmar counts since records began,\u201d commented Cathel Morrison, Conservation Manager for Sandwood Estate. \u201cIt looks as though the Fulmar, one of our most common and resilient sea birds, is in as much trouble as other species such as puffins, kittiwakes, guillemots and arctic terns.\u201d <\/p>\n
Related to the Albatross, the Fulmar looks superficially like a gull but is in fact a member of the petrel family. Superb gliders, they live much of their life out to sea and are the constant companion to fishing boats in the North Sea and Atlantic. They eat discards from fishing boats, as well as zooplankton and small fish under the ocean\u2019s surface and can live for up to fifty years. <\/p>\n
The Trust\u2019s Fulmar count mirrors annual research collated by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Government\u2019s advisor on nature conservation, into seabird numbers in Britain and Ireland. Latest available figures for surveys in 2005 and 2006 show a decrease in Fulmars in western regions of Britain, combined with poor breeding success in the North of Scotland. There has been a downward trend in numbers across Britain since the late 1990s. <\/p>\n
Because Fulmars do not dive for sand eels like many other seabirds their population decline cannot be attributed to the disappearance – linked by many to climate change – of this single source of food. Fulmars could be suffering from a more general famine and are likely to have been affected by the dwindling whitefish fishing industry. <\/p>\n
Before the mid 18th century, Fulmars only bred in one or two colonies in Iceland and St Kilda. They were essential to the islanders of St Kilda, who harvested them for food and oil which they used to burn in their lamps. The last 350 years has seen a spectacular expansion of Fulmar populations throughout NW Europe and across the Atlantic to Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese survey results are alarming,\u201d concluded Cathel. \u201cIf this rate of decline does not level off soon, we could be looking the collapse of our seabird breeding colony at Sandwood within the next few years.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year\u2019s count of nesting fulmars on John Muir Trust\u2019s Sandwood Bay estate, near Cape Wrath, have raised fears that 2008 could be another dire year for Scotland\u2019s seabirds. Only 261 nesting pairs were counted on the cliffs that once supported over 700 pairs, representing a decline of around 60% in ten years. The Trust has been counting breeding Fulmars, a key indicator species for the health of North Sea, on the same three mile stretch of cliffs between Sandwood Bay and Sheigra since 1997. \u201cOur surveys in both 2008 and 2007 have recorded the lowest Fulmar counts since records…<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}