Night-time light pollution causes difficulties to breeding shearwaters, petrels and storm petrels, notably fledglings, at many localities around the World.  For examples, click here to access publications on light pollution affecting Cory’s Shearwaters Calonectris diomedea. 

Kevin Gaston (Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, UK) and colleagues reviewed the consequences of light pollution in the Journal of Animal Ecology in 2012.

The paper’s summary follows:

“Much concern has been expressed about the ecological consequences of night-time light pollution.  This concern is most often focused on the encroachment of artificial light into previously unlit areas of the night-time environment, but changes in the spectral composition, duration and spatial pattern of light are also recognized as having ecological effects.

Here, we examine the potential consequences for organisms of five management options to reduce night-time light pollution.  These are to (i) prevent areas from being artificially lit; (ii) limit the duration of lighting; (iii) reduce the ‘trespass’ of lighting into areas that are not intended to be lit (including the night sky); (iv) change the intensity of lighting; and (v) change the spectral composition of lighting.

Maintaining and increasing natural unlit areas is likely to be the most effective option for reducing the ecological effects of lighting.  However, this will often conflict with other social and economic objectives.  Decreasing the duration of lighting will reduce energy costs and carbon emissions, but is unlikely to alleviate many impacts on nocturnal and crepuscular animals, as peak times of demand for lighting frequently coincide with those in the activities of these species.  Reducing the trespass of lighting will maintain heterogeneity even in otherwise well-lit areas, providing dark refuges that mobile animals can exploit.  Decreasing the intensity of lighting will reduce energy consumption and limit both skyglow and the area impacted by high-intensity direct light.  Shifts towards ‘whiter’ light are likely to increase the potential range of environmental impacts as light is emitted across a broader range of wavelengths.

Synthesis and applications. The artificial lightscape will change considerably over coming decades with the drive for more cost-effective low-carbon street lighting solutions and growth in the artificially lit area.  Developing lighting strategies that minimize adverse ecological impacts while balancing the often conflicting requirements of light for human utility, comfort and safety, aesthetic concerns, energy consumption and carbon emission reduction constitute significant future challenges.  However, as both lighting technology and understanding of its ecological effects develop, there is potential to identify adaptive solutions that resolve these conflicts.”

A fledgling Newell's Shearwater gets released after being downed by street lights in Hawaii

Photograph by Elizabeth Ames

Reference:

Gaston, K.J., Davies, T.W., Bennie, J. & Hopkins, J. 2012.  Review: reducing the ecological consequences of night-time light pollution: options and developments.  Journal of Animal Ecology 49: 1256-1266.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 July 2014

A draft management plan to replace the existing one published in 2005 for Australia's Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve (HIMI) in the southern Indian Ocean is now open for public comment (click here).

Heard and the McDonald Islands support populations of ACAP-listed seabirds including Black-browed Thalassarche melanophris and Light-mantled Sooty Phoebetria palpebrata Albatrosses and Southern Giant Petrels Macronectes giganteus.

“HIMI is one of the least anthropologically disturbed areas in the world and is Australia’s largest International Union for Conservation of Nature Strict Nature Reserve, which is the highest category of protected area recognised by the World Commission on Protected Areas.

The draft management plan has a strong focus on biosecurity and waste management and is the second plan prepared for the Reserve under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.”

Herad Island's central Big Ben with Mawson Peak, photograph by Barbara Wienecke

The reserve covers 71 200 km², including 6200 km² of marine waters added in March this year (click here).

When implemented, the new management plan will direct management of the reserve for 10 years.

Comments are due by 15 August 2014 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or mailed to:

HIMI Marine Reserve Management Plan Review

Australian Antarctic Division

203 Channel Highway

Kingston, Tasmania 7050, Australia.

For more information go to www.heardisland.aq.

Selected Literature:

Australian Antarctic Division 2005.  Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan.  Kingston: Australian Antarctic Division.  198 pp.

[Australian Antarctic Division] 2014.  Heard Island and McDonald Islands Marine Reserve Management Plan July 2014.  [Kingston]: Australian Antarctic Division.  112 pp.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 July 2014

The New Zealand Bird Rescue Charitable Trust has commenced to release the six juvenile Northern Giant Petrels Macronectes halli that is has taken into care over the last several weeks.

Northern Giant Petrels under care, photographs by the New Zealand Bird Rescue Charitable Trust

Three birds were released at the end of last month at Muriwai in the Auckland region of New Zealand’s North Island from where they flew out to sea.

Read more in the New Zealand Herald and in an earlier report in ACAP Latest News.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 July 2014

The Kauaʻi Endangered Seabird Recovery Project (KESRP) is a Hawaiian Division of Forestry and Wildlife project, administered through the Pacific Studies Co-operative Unit of the University of Hawaiʻi.  Formed in 2006, the project focuses primarily on three threatened seabirds that breed on the island of Kauaʻi – Newell’s Shearwater Puffinus newelli, Hawaiian Petrel Pterodroma sandwichensis and Band-rumped Storm Petrel Oceanodroma castro.

KESRP has recently reported on its work placing cameras at seabird burrows on Kaua‘i and filming feral Domestic Cats Felis catus entering burrows, in two separate cases killing a Newell’s Shearwater and a Hawaiian Petrel (click here).

“In one of the videos, a cat enters a rare Newell’s Shearwater burrow at a site within the Hono o Na Pali Natural Area Reserve.  It is then seen struggling about in the burrow and then emerging with the shearwater in its mouth before killing it and eating parts of it off camera.  The remains of the bird were recovered a few days later by KESRP staff.  The bird was one of a pair of the very rare Newell’s Shearwaters that had successfully fledged a chick last year.”

“The cameras are showing that cats are regularly visiting seabird burrows.  Last year, we had one cat visit nine burrows in a single day – killing a Hawaiian Petrel chick in the process.  If one considers that we are only monitoring a small number of burrows with cameras in a small number of areas, then the true impact of feral cats must be very significant indeed.   These cats are not house pets. They are predators capable of wiping out entire colonies of our native and endemic seabirds.”

“This season, KESRP has already recorded 25 instances on camera of feral cats trying to enter breeding bird burrows, including the two that resulted in the birds inside being killed.  The remains of nine endangered seabirds killed by cats have also been discovered at multiple remote sites around the island so far this season.”

Newell's Shearwater photograph by Eic Vanderwerf

Read more in news accounts in the Star Advertiser and the Garden Isle.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 06 July 2014