Common Indicator 4: Population abundance of selected species - Seabirds

Reporter:: SPA/RAC
Geographical scale of the assessment:: Regional, Mediterranean Sea
Contributing countries:
Mid-Term Strategy (MTS) Core Theme:: 2-Biodiversity and Ecosystems
Ecological Objective:: EO1: Biological diversity is maintained or enhanced. The quality and occurrence of coastal and marine habitats and the distribution and abundance of coastal and marine species are in line with prevailing physiographic, hydrographic, geographic and climatic conditions.
IMAP Common Indicator:: Common Indicator 4 (CI4): Population abundance of selected species (related to seabirds)
Indicator Assessment Factsheet Code:: EO1CI4

GES Definition: The species population has abundance levels allowing to qualify to Least Concern Category of IUCN.

GES Targets:

Pressure: No human induced decrease in population abundance. Population recovers towards natural levels where depleted.
State: The total number of individuals is sparse enough in different spots.

Background

The Mediterranean Sea is considered an important habitat for seabirds, including particularly the Critically Endangered Balearic shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus), the endemic Yelkouan shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) and the little tern (Sterna alibifrons). In addition to these species, a number of other seabird species are listed in the Annexes of the Protocol Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Biological Diversity in the Mediterranean of the Barcelona Convention (SPA-BD Protocol).

Assessment methods

Estimating breeding seabird populations might seem straightforward, but is often an extremely complex task, particularly with the nocturnal and burrowing species such as the shearwaters (e.g. Sutherland et al. 1994).

For gulls and terns, they tend to breed in aggregated colonies and their direct count may be relatively easy. Ideally a nest count is recommended, by visiting the colony and prospect systematically all the area occupied by the seabirds.

Results and Status, including trends

Derhé (2012) has assessed the global population of Puffinus yelkouan and estimated it to be 46,000-92,000 individuals. However, very high non-breeding season numbers reported in the Bosporus suggest that there may be a large percentage of non-breeding birds in the population and estimates of breeding numbers at colonies may be underestimated. It is predicted that the global breeding population is suffering a rapid decline of c.50% over three generations (54 years) – a considerably higher rate of decline than was previously predicted. As such, the species’ global Red List status has now been revised to Vulnerable based on the findings of Derhé (2012).

Conclusions

The overall pattern of seabird abundance in the Mediterranean region is consistent with the results of common indicator 3 (distribution): seabirds tend to be more abundant in the north and west of the Mediterranean basin. This is particularly so in the case of the most marine species (shearwaters, Mediterranean shag and Audouin’s gull). As in the case of the distribution patterns, it remains to elucidate to which extent this pattern, that makes sense in terms of productivity and maybe also of suitable breeding habitat availability, is not confounded by prospection effort/data quality.

Patterns of abundance roughly match those of distribution for seabirds, with a southeast to northwest increase.
Information is patchy, often old and subject to potentially high biases, particularly in the case of the shearwaters. Establishing population trends for the latter is complicated without censuses.

References

The reference list includes Works that are not specifically quoted in the text but have been consulted to assess distribution and population figures:

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Arcos, J.M. 2016. Conservation of the Critically Endangered Balearic shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus: an update. In: Yésou, P., Sultana, J., Walmsley, J. & Azafzaf, H. (Eds). Conservation of marine and coastal birds in the Mediterranean. Proceedings of the UNEP-MAP-RAC/SPA Symposium, Hammamet, 20 to 22 February 2015, Tunisia. Pp: 22-26.

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Biodiversity and Ecosystem (EO 1)