From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Every year we are fed the same scare story about Britain’s Atlantic Puffins all disappearing in the near future.
This time, the Daily Telegraph has fallen for it, reporting:
“Puffins could almost disappear from the British Isles in the next 25 years, new research has warned.
Numbers of the seabird have fallen in recent years, leading to the species being declared vulnerable to global extinction.
Climate change, overfishing, invasive species, pollution and habitat loss are among the causes that have threatened their existence.
Research from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has warned of a possible 90 per cent crash in the puffin population of the British Isles by 2050, amid a battle to reverse the species’ “catastrophic decline”.
The BTO said: “One of the greatest concerns for BTO scientists is the decline in sand eels, which are a major food source for many adult, and especially young, seabirds. Overfishing and changes in climate are significant drivers in the loss of the sand eels.
“An increase in extreme winter storms, exacerbated by climate change, has also resulted in high mortality of puffins and other seabirds.
The Atlantic puffin is one of 10 seabird species predicted to suffer long-term effects on their populations as a result of climate change, as warming air and sea temperatures reduce food availability and drive extreme weather events.
Recent declines have been linked to increasingly frequent marine heatwaves and intense storms, which led to thousands perishing at sea last winter.”
As often with these silly scare stories, the reverse is true.
One of Britain’s biggest puffin colonies is on Skomer Island, just off the Pembrokeshire coast. The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has been conducting population counts there every spring since 2004.
Their surveys have shown a steady increase in puffin numbers in recent years. This year a record number of 52019 puffins were counted. Back in the 1990s numbers rarely exceeded 10000:
https://www.welshwildlife.org/news/tag/puffins
In contrast to Skomer, puffin populations did decline in the North Sea in the early 2000s. Some suggest a drop of 25%. But even here, recent surveys show numbers recovering – on the Isle of May, for instance, there were around 52000 burrows counted in 2024, up from 39000 in 2017.
The difference between Skomer and the North Sea is not climate change – after all, seas around South Wales are much warmer than in the North Sea. The decline of North Sea puffins in the early 2000s was directly linked to the industrial fishing of sand eel, the puffins’ staple diet.
The UK finally banned all commercial fishing for sand eel in UK waters in the North Sea two years ago, despite complaints from Danish fishing organisations that it would lead to the loss of half of their traditional fishing grounds. The Danes produce half of the EU’s fishmeal, much of it derived from sand eel.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea currently list three out of four North Sea zones as having very low stocks of sand eel and recommend zero-catch this year in two. The one exception is the southern part of the North Sea, where the seas are warmer.
Don’t blame climate change for declining puffin population in the North Sea. Don’t blame increasingly “extreme weather” either, because it is not even occurring.
Instead put the blame where it belongs – overfishing.
It’s hardly rocket science!
