Five seabird species added to UK’s ‘red list’ for conservation concern
Breeding seabird populations face a growing list of threats, including climate change impacts, overfishing and entanglement in fishing gear.
Five seabird species have been added to the UK’s “red list” of greatest conservation concern.
Scientists reviewing the status of the country’s breeding seabird populations revealed that the Leach’s Storm-petrel, Common Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Arctic Tern and Great Skua are among Britain’s most at risk birds.
They join another five threatened seabird species already on the red list – the Kittiwake, Herring Gull, Roseate Tern, Arctic Skua and Puffin.
The update, carried out by a coalition of the UK’s leading bird conservation organisations and published in the journal British Birds on Monday, follows the recent assessment of 28 seabird species.
Apart from two species found to be no longer breeding in the UK, the seabirds were categorised as red, amber or green-listed depending on how threatened they were considered to be.
The five additions brings the total number of species on the red list to 73 of 245 regularly occurring bird species in the UK – equating to 30%.
