The protection of the puffins

Posted on July 26, 2009 by cinzia

puffins colony

Among the natural looters of the puffins there are the great black-backed gull, the sea eagle, the fox and the rat. Man too has always plundered these birds to eat them and to use their feathers to pad clothes.

The traditional hunting with nests, done for centuries in Norway, Iceland, Scotland, Maine, Newfoundland, and in the Faer Oer islands, has never touched the birds that was feeding the newborns, so to grant the survival of the colony.

However, iIn the Nineteenth century the use if fire-arms has been destructive: it put in serious danger the survival of the French colonies, and completely cancelled those in Maine. Nowadays hunting the puffins is forbidden.

Only on the coasts of Iceland and Faer Oer the nests are used to trap these birds. However, the Government protects the species closing the areas where the birds make their nests until the newborns are ready to go to the sea.

Some behaviours of the puffins may put in jeopardy the species. Sometimes the habit of the colonies to come back to the same spot to reproduce is very dangerous. If the habitat conditions change, for instance, there’s less fish in the area and therefore the consequences may be terrible.
Even fishing may hurt the puffin: they indie often remain entrapped into the nests of the fishing boats and they drown.

In Maine the experiment of repopulating has been successful so far: some chicks taken from their galleries in other areas are transferred and fed along the coasts of this State, and once they become adults they continue to live on these coasts making new colonies.