This Valentine's Day, show the love... for seabirds and for success on the Scilly's

This week, in the run up to Valentine's Day, people have been wearing their green hearts on their sleeve, their wrists, their schools, their football clubs, anywhere to show the love for the things that will be affected by climate change.  

This is the second year that The Climate Change Coalition (of which the RSPB is a founder member) has inspired people to believe that we can protect the life we love from climate change.  Our motivation is simple - to create overwhelming public momentum for, and major political commitment to, action to combat climate change.

The case for action was reinforced by a recent paper in Science (here) that reviewed 130 studies to identify the level of risk that climate change poses to wildlife.  The conclusion was that unless we take action to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, up to one in six of all species will be at risk of extinction.

In the UK, we have particular concerns about our internationally important populations of seabirds.  Warming seas are disrupting the marine food web with sand eels disappearing due to dramatic changes in their plankton diet.  In turn, birds are not finding enough sandeel food to sustain them and their young.  Kittiwakes, arctic terns, guillemots (shown below in Andy Hay's fabulous photo) and shags are among the seabirds that depend on sandeels for adult and chick food and some colonies have experienced catastrophic declines.

Yet, climate change is compounding many of the other threats that seabirds face including development at sea, fishing but also predation from non-native invasive species.  We have been particularly concerned by island colonies where rats have severely affected breeding seabird populations.

This is why we are increasingly taking action in partnership with others to tackling invasive species.

Following the success of eradication of rats on Lundy, we embarked on a project to reverse the declines in seabird populations on the Isles of Scilly through removal of rats from the islands of St Agnes and Gugh, and maintain the uninhabited islands rat-free.

And today, we are delighted to report that St Agnes and Gugh are rat-free after passing a thorough month-long inspection two years after the last signs of rat activity were spotted.  This is a fantastic achievement and I would like to send huge congratulations to all those involved in the Isles of Scilly Seabird Recovery Project.  The team has already been buoyed by a response from the seabirds: since the removal of the rat population, the project team has observed both Manx shearwaters (see Chris Gomersall's image below) and storm petrels successfully breeding on the islands for the first time in living memory, with over 40 chicks being recorded on the islands in the last two years. 

We are looking for similar results on the Shiants where we are embarking on a similar project (see here).

So this weekend, please do wear your green heart on your sleeve (or your wrist) to show the love for the things that are affected by climate change.  But also, please also take heart that targeted conservation action can and has tackled other threats facing the wildlife we love.