Archived News

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At its Third Meeting, held in Valdivia, Chile in June 2007, ACAP’s Advisory Committee discussed the desirability of listing new species of procellariiforms within the Agreement, following a consideration of a document* that used an additive scoring system to assess all 129 members of the tubenose order as potential candidates for listing. The three North Pacific Albatrosses of the genus Phoebastria emerged as the strongest candidates in this exercise.  As a consequence the Advisory Committee requested the Secretariat to produce an intersessional document to aid a further discussion at its next meeting. It is thus timely that Canada and the USA, both range states for North Pacific albatrosses, have recently produced documents that assess the current status of two of these three albatrosses.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC, www.cosewic.gc.ca) published in 2007 an assessment and status report on the Black-footed Albatross P. nigripes. In 2003 COSEWIC had produced a similar report for the Short-tailed Albatross P. albatrus. These two reports can be found at www.sararegistry.gc.ca/status/status_e.cfm.

In October 2007 the USA released its first version of a conservation action plan for both the Black-footed and Laysan P. immutabilis Albatrosses, produced by its U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service www.fws.gov/pacific/migratorybirds/conservation.htm). Previously in 2005 the USFWS published a draft Recovery Plan for the Short-tailed Albatross (http://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plan/051027.pdf).

These four documents will materially aid the ACAP Secretariat, with the promised help of interested Parties, to prepare its report for the Fourth Meeting of the ACAP Advisory Committee, to be held in South Africa in August 2008. If support is then forthcoming, the Advisory Committee will seek a Party or Parties to propose the listing of the three North Pacific Albatrosses to its Third Meeting of Parties, due to be held in 2009.

More information on North Pacific albatrosses may be found at the web sites of the North Pacific Albatross Working Group (http://npawg.wikispaces.com), the Tagging of Pacific Predators programme (http://topp.org) and the Oikonos non-profit organization http://www.oikonos.org/projects/albatross.htm.

*Cooper, J. & Baker, G. B. Choosing candidate species for future inclusion within the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels. ***CLICK HERE to read ACAP AC3 Doc 18***

News from John Cooper, ACAP Honorary Information Officer, with information supplied by Louise Blight and Maura Naughton Posted 16 March 2008