Dogs Protect Penguins

In what is believed to be a world first, a Maremma Guardian dog has been successfully used to protect Little Penguin and Shearwater colonies from fox and dog predation on Middle Island in Warrnambool.

Middle Island is part of the Thunder Point Coastal Reserve and is managed by the Warrnambool City Council (WCC) with much support from local community. The Island has a history of foxes and dogs preying upon the Little Penguin and Short-tailed Shearwaters colonies that inhabit the Island.

The Little Penguin population has been decimated from estimates of more than 600 in the year 2000 to fewer than 10 in 2005. For several years, the WCC has implemented a fox control strategy which included shooting, fumigation and trapping. While showing some minor successes, it failed to sustain the Little Penguin population. Along came the idea of ‘Oddball’, a Maremma Guardian dog who could live on Middle Island and protect the seabird colonies from predation in their critical time of breeding.

Fish Stock Plummeting

We’ll all be vegans with no choice about it….

…walleye pollack, which accounts for a third of the total US fish catch, is … in danger.

Fisheries scientists met last week in Seattle and recommended that next year’s catch in the eastern Bering Sea, the main walleye pollack-fishing region for US boats, be cut by 18% to 815,000 tonnes. See the report (pdf format).

A series of cuts in recent years have seen the quota drop from almost 1,500,000 tonnes in 2005.
*
In addition there is tuna:

The collapse of north Atlantic cod populations could provide an important lesson for preventing tuna from suffering a similar fate worldwide, researchers say.

Over-fishing caused Canada’s cod industry to plummet in value from $1.4 billion in 1968 to just $10 million in 2004. Now researchers warn that tuna fisheries worldwide are on the brink of a similar collapse.

*

And see Andrew Revkin’s The (Tuna) Tragedy of the Commons

CA Oil Spill Update

“About 2,150 birds have been found dead or have died at the bird rescue center since Nov. 7, the day the Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel oil.

Bird experts figure that for every bird found dead or alive, about five to 10 others go unreported because they sink at sea, get eaten by predators or fly elsewhere. That would put the fatality number at up to 21,500 birds.”

Birds Still Dying

Science by Citizen

The Audubon Society released a report today that has gotten some press attention: the severe decline in many bird species over the past 40 years.

The Greater Scaup can be seen in SF Bay Area waters, but in the US it has declined by 75% since 1967. Other species have declined as much, or more: the Northern Pintail, a beautiful water fowl, by 77%; the Northern Bobwhite by 82%.

What most of the articles don’t mention is that the findings have come through citizen science. Every Christmas Audubon holds a Christmas Bird count. As the Christians replaced pagan mid-winter celebrations with their birth of the Child days, so Audubon related conservationists in the early 1900s replaced the traditional Christmas “Side Hunt” [the side with the most feathers wins] with a bird count. The Christmas Bird Count has become a big deal in the US and elsewhere with some 50,000 participants.

The numbers of birds in each species, at particular sites, on the same day are submitted to a central database and published. It is from these data as well as more from the Breeding Bird Survey –another volunteer effort– that the report is compiled.

For a list of the top twenty declines see here.

Much of the decline is due to development and change of habitat and radical industrial agricultural policies. There are of course climactic changes taking place further affecting birds, as well as bird-watchers, which will be dealt with in a forthcoming report from Audubon. ScienceBlogs, meanwhile, has a report of bird survival projected in several mathematical models.