| Popis: |
The waved albatross of Galápagos, the world’s only tropical albatross, has survived millennia of flying in low-velocity winds by foraging relatively short distances to the Peruvian upwelling. The advent of longline fishing along the coast of Peru and recent changes in El Niño have caught the albatross in a demographic pinch, rendering it critically endangered since 2007. Because reproductive pairs lay only a single egg per year under the best of circumstances, the conservation challenges are noteworthy and all the more serious because recurrent El Niño events shut down the albatrosses’ food supply. Effective conservation measures include human intervention to save “marooned” and abandoned eggs, to change longlining practices in the Peruvian coastal fishery, and to provide safe refugia on a small island off the coast of Ecuador where hungry albatrosses can raise chicks even closer to the upwelling. But until our efforts suffice to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the growing severity of El Niño events, we shall all have an albatross hanging around our necks: the beautiful waved albatross of Galápagos. |
