The Power Of Cuddly.(Conservation)(decline in the population of puffins and other birds in Europe)

Byline: Christopher Werth

The North Sea puffin, much beloved by the British public, may be the most visible victim of our sick oceans. Is it cute enough to inspire a rescue effort?

Mike Harris describes himself as one of those "sad people" who, having worked an entire career on a cause, continue even after retirement. Since leaving full-time research and teaching, Harris devotes two months a year to working on the Isle of May, a small and desolate nature reserve off the coast of Scotland, as a research fellow with the Centre for Hydrology and Ecology, monitoring one of Britain's puffin colonies--the largest in the North Sea. Puffins appear on land only a few months a year, just long enough to rear their young, which means the photogenic birds spend most of their 30-year life span entirely at sea, diving into the water, using their wings to propel them far below the surface, to feed on small fish and plankton. "Puffins are a bit like penguins," says Harris. "People have a sort of death wish on them. You only have to have half a dozen wash up dead on a beach, and [people] go into mourning." Because conservationists have cried wolf in the past, Harris is cautious about making public proclamations of threats to the birds. "It takes quite a big jolt before I'm prepared to say there is something the matter."

The big jolt came during this year's breeding season. A survey showed a 30 percent reduction in the number of nesting pairs on the island. Returning adults also weighed less than in the past, which suggests they are having problems finding food in the winter. Across the cold, choppy sea, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research reported a 10 percent decline. Although these numbers don't spell the imminent demise of the North Sea puffins, scientists are particularly worried because until recently the puffin was considered a conservation success story. Local environmental disasters, like oil spills, tend not to kill large numbers all at once because the birds don't congregate on the high seas during winter months. "If you have lost a lot of puffins, it means that something big has happened over a substantial area," says Harris.

The puffin isn't the only bird at risk. Bird populations across Europe have been declining steeply in recent years. A 2007 report published jointly by several conservation groups warned that nearly half the continent's most common birds, such as the partridge and turtledove, are in trouble. The nightingale, a source of inspiration in English poetry from Milton to Keats, has experienced a 63 percent decline since 1980, when the study began. The little bustard, a pheasantlike bird that inhabits dry grasslands across southern Europe, has become regionally extinct in 11 countries, including Germany and Poland. The 2008 Red List of Threatened Species, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has had several new entries, including the Dartford warbler, named after a town in the English county of Kent. Although the bird has only recently recovered in Britain from a severe winter 45 years ago, it has gone from a status of "least concern" to "near threatened" throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

The reason for the decline in birds is a mystery. Intensive fishing and ...