MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands and Prince celebrate success of albatross campaign

At a formal reception at Clarence House in London on Monday February 23rd HRH the Prince of Wales, who has long been concerned about the dramatic decline of the albatross, heard that 18 of the world's 22 species threatened with extinction have a brighter future thanks to the efforts of the Albatross Task Force (ATF).

Ann Brown, UK Executive Officer for Falklands Conservation also attended the event. She said: "It was fantastic to hear firsthand of the enthusiasm of the Prince of Wales for this campaign, which means a lot to Falklands Conservation. He spoke to everyone at the reception to encourage, learn and seek further support. It was so uplifting to hear that the battle to reduce albatross mortality at sea is beginning to be won. In fact, I felt proud that the Falklands has been a pioneer in leading the way to the adoption of successful devices in reducing mortality of seabirds and that expertise gained in the Islands has been so successfully exported around the world." The Albatross Task Force is a pioneering scheme uniting conservationists, governments and fishing industries. Created by the RSPB and BirdLife International in 2006, it is the first international scheme to place specialised instructors on fishing vessels to reduce the number of seabirds killed accidentally. The Task Force, which first started in South Africa, worked initially with the longline fishing industry (targeting tuna and swordfish), but recently it has been extended to the trawling industry too. There are now ATF instructors in seven countries, each with globally important populations of seabirds. A former member of the FC team, Oliver Yates, who coordinated the Falklands albatross and petrel programme, is currently coordinating the South American Task Force in Chile in an effort to reduce seabird mortalities there. Ben Sullivan, who also worked for FC from 2001-2004, was critical in pioneering and adopting seabird mitigation devices within the Falklands fishing fleet that are still in place today and resulted in the formal adoption of the National Plan of Actions for Seabirds (NPOA-S) for both longline and trawling fisheries. The adoption of tori lines (bird-scaring lines) in the Falkland trawl fishery led to a 90% decrease in black-browed albatross mortality in the first year of adoption, however subsequent years were not as successful and there is much work still to be done. FC has been running the Seabird at Sea programme since 2001 by placing observers on fishing trawlers and is currently in the process of updating and revising the trawling NPOA-S to make further and improved recommendations for protecting seabirds in Falkland Islands waters. Source: Penguin News