A cleaned-up Macquarie Island leads to BirdLife Australia down-listing three of its four albatrosses

BirdLife Australia’s Threatened Species Committee has recognised an improved conservation outlook for eight of the 14 seabird species that breed on Macquarie Island following the success of the Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project (MIPEP) in eradicating rodents and rabbits (click here).

This has resulted in an improved threatened status being recommended for three of the four ACAP-listed albatrosses that breed on the island as follows:

Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris:  down-list to Least Concern from Endangered

Grey-headed Albatross T. chrysostoma:  down-list to Endangered from Critically Endangered

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross Phoebetria palpebrata:  down-list to Least Concern from Endangered

Note that these changes do not affect the species’ global threatened status which currently stay unchanged, nor the categories of threat listed for the species in Australia's  Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

The domestic threatened conservation status of the fourth albatross species at Macquarie, the Wandering Diomedea exulans that only breeds in small numbers on the island, remains unchanged.

Grey-headed Albatrosses on Macquarie Island, photograph by Aleks Terauds

Read more here.

With thanks to Rachael Alderman, Stephen Garnett and Keith Springer for information

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 07 December 2016