Europe’s rarest seabird is the Balearic shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus), which breeds in the Mediterranean and migrates north into the Atlantic after breeding. It is seen increasingly off Britain with perhaps ¼ of the world population using our seas in late summer. But it is critically endangered (IUCN Red List), and faces a deeply uncertain future because of threats from fisheries by-catch and climate change at sea, and predation pressure and human disturbance at the breeding colonies. If current low survival rates persist, complete extinction is predicted in a few decades. Despite this, still remarkably little is known about its behaviour and ecological needs: knowledge which must underpin conservation efforts to avert its extinction.
At Oxford’s Department of Biology, a research team led by Tim Guilford and Ollie Padget collaborate internationally with conservationists to fill vital knowledge gaps and raise awareness of the species’ plight. We use state-of-the-art miniature tracking technologies to tackle fundamental questions about where birds feed, risks from human fisheries, and how migration patterns are shifting under climate change. At key colonies in the Balearic islands, where the birds breed in limestone caves, we monitor long-term survival, breeding success, juvenile recruitment, and the effects of invasive predators. £25 will fuel our research boat for a week, £50 will build a sturdy next-box, and a long-term migration tracker costs £165 – but every little helps!