Climate blamed as one in five seabirds dies

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 22:03

A LACK of food due to climate change has been blamed for a 19 per cent drop in Scotland's seabird population over the past eight years.

Experts say the decline, which is much greater than the 9 per cent drop for the UK as a whole, highlights a deeply worrying trend.

The stark picture is revealed in a report from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), together with the latest figures for 2000 to 2008 from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).

The JNCC said the figures represented a "turning of the tide" for seabirds breeding in Scotland, which increased in numbers from the late 1960s to the end of the 1990s.

The major cause of the problem is almost certainly a shortage of small fish, such as sand eels, which are likely being affected by rising sea temperatures, they said.

It means fewer adult birds are surviving from one year to the next, and not enough chicks are being produced to replace them.

Among species affected were black-legged kittiwake and Arctic skuas, which have fallen by 55 per cent and 71 per cent since the mid-1980s. Arctic terns declined by 26 per cent over the same period.

On Copinsay in Orkney, there has been a 70 per cent decline in razorbills, a 57 per cent drop in Kittiwakes and 25 per cent fall in guillemot numbers since 2000.

Prof Colin Galbraith, SNH director of policy and advice, said:

"After several decades of increasing seabird abundance, we are now witnessing a period of decline. Key reasons are likely to be linked to food availability, weather and predation. In particular, climate change appears to have affected plankton at the base of the food web."

Douglas Gilbert, RSPB reserve ecologist, said if the declines continued, many of Scotland's "seabird cities" could be almost deserted within a decade.