They’ve Done It Again: An Albatross Chick [View all]

[XemaSab]

To the delight of scientists, a pair of lovers returned to Midway this year for what might turn out to be an annual sojourn. The two birds are endangered short-tailed albatrosses, and for the second time in the species’ recorded history, they nested there, producing a chick on American soil.

Most short-tailed albatrosses breed on a volcanic island in Japan, and scientists hope they are seeing the beginning of a new breeding colony that could help ensure the species’ survival in the event of a catastrophic eruption.

“Because the Japanese population is threatened, it certainly would be desirable for long-term species recovery to establish new populations,” said George Wallace, the vice president for oceans and islands at the American Bird Conservancy.

Short-tailed albatrosses once numbered in the millions, making them the most abundant albatross species in the North Pacific. Feather hunters decimated the population around the turn of the century, however, and researchers believed by the 1940’s that the species had gone extinct. In the 1950’s, however, scientists discovered 10 breeding pairs on Japan’s Torishima Island, a group that has since grown to around 3,000.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/theyve-done-it-again-an-albatross-chick/