How Scarybirds are flying to the rescue of endangered species

The Berlengas archipelago off the coast of Portugal is a nature reserve — and a precious breeding area for shearwaters, cormorants, gulls and other seabirds.

Ana Almeida and Elisabete Silva are marine conservation officers at the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds. For years, they’ve been helping the local seabird populations.

"Seabirds are amazing!” says Ana. “They are birds that explore three different environments: the skies, land and the sea. And they have these fantastic and amazing adaptations to live in the water. They are really resistant, and they are excellent sentinels of the health of our oceans. So if they are facing decline, it is telling us that the sea is not healthy anymore and that we have to do something."

On the main islands of the archipelago, they maintain artificial nests to help shearwaters raise their young. But while some bird species are doing well, others are steadily declining — and in recent decades, some have completely disappeared.

"Seabirds are the group of birds that are more threatened by human activities and other threats,” Ana explains. “For example, the Balearic Shearwater is the most threatened seabird species in Europe. It uses this area during winter, and the predictions say that in 60 years if we don't do anything, it will be extinct. It will not exist anymore. So we have several species facing different threats and having severe declines in their populations."

But why this decline? Could it be related to the fishing in these rich waters? Half of all seabird populations in Europe are declining or considered threatened. Many of these birds are accidentally killed by hooks and nets of fishing vessels - that’s more than 200,000 seabirds every year, one bird every three minutes -