newsUK puffin population down 25% since 2000
UK populations of puffins have fallen by 25% since 2000 despite continued attempts to protect them. This week puffins and other seabirds return to Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire, home to the UK’s largest mainland seabird colony. The Royal Society for the Protection of Bords (RSPB) and the BBC are doing their best to publicise the situation facing some of Britain’s best loved seabirds. RSPB member TREVOR GRUNDY reports-
Dave O’Hara, reserve manager at Bempton Cliffs,told the BBC that the main issue was the availability of sandeels in the North Sea.
“Sandeels may be small, but they sit at the very heart of the North Sea food web. Without them, seabirds like Puffins and Kittiwakes simply cannot raise their chicks successfully,” he said.
About half a million birds breed on the 400ft (120m) cliffs at Bempton every year
Researchers at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said that sandeel populations had been under intense pressure for decades due to unsustainable industrial-scale fishing, climate change and wider pressures on the marine environment.
Following years of campaigning by the charity and its supporters, the UK Government announced the closure of industrial seabed fishing in English waters of the North Sea in January 2024, with the permanent closure coming into effect in the spring of the same year.
RSPB’s director for conservation, Katie-Jo Luxton, said: “We cannot take the arrival of puffins and other seabirds back to our shores for granted.
Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire and a volunteer RSPB guide
The most recent seabird census, published in November 2023, found more than half the seabird species breeding on British and Irish coasts had declined over the last 20 years.
About one in four Puffins had been lost from the UK’s seabird colonies since 2000.
Meantime, a report published by the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) shows Britain’s butterflies are dying out, with 33 native species fighting to survive.
Professor Richard Fox, head of science at Butterfly Conservation has described the figures as “damning.”
He told Xantha Leatham, Executive Science Editor at the Daily Mail –
“Just as we have lost family- run shops and traditional skills from the nation’s high streets, so we’ve lost variety and diversity in the butterfly communities that can exist our damaged and simplified landscapes.”
The number of pearl-bordered fritillaries have failed by about 70 percent since 1976.
And white—letter hairstreaks, which only lay their eggs on elm trees, have suffered huge losses after millions of elm trees died from disease.
Last year, summer was the hottest on record. Insects should have thrived but only average numbers were recorded.
The UKBMS said that 33 of Britain’s 59 butterfly species had declined over the last 50 years.
“We know what we need to do to help them,” said Professor Fox. ”Create more habitat.”
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