Austral seabirds: challenges and opportunities for research and conservation

Abstract

Ihis paper draws together the themes of papers on procellariiform biology contained within chis special issue of the Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania which is a tribute to Irynej Skira. The role of these birds as generalised biomonitors of marine ecosystem health as well as their important interactions with commercial fisheries and human societies are major considerations. Seabird conserva tion faces challenges from introduced pest species, loss of habitat to urban development, marine pollution and climate and oceanographic changes. Studies are hampered by the difficulties of dealing with birds in remote areas (that are therefore expensive to study), a paucity of funds and problems of overlapping national and international jurisdictions in their individual home ranges or on their migration routes. There is a real need for long-term studies of seabirds because they have delayed breeding systems, a slow rate of reproduction, long life-spans and high adult survival. Such knowledge is important in understanding their population dynamics, the effects of changing climate, the impacts of commercial fishing, pollution, breeding habitat loss and the harvesting of chicks. The value of the long-term studies of Shon tailed Shearwaters, Puf/inus tenuirostris, on Fisher Island, Tasmania, is considered in the light of the importance of research investment in basic curiosity-driven research. Neglect of long-term studies and the diminishing role of local scientific journals in the dissemination of baseline data on which to build generalities arc the result of changing priorities of government and ocher funding agencies towards short term output-based assessment models. Our present inability to answer the basic question of what determines seabird population abundance and distribution highlights a lack of fundamental population data in Austral seabird research. This must be addressed so chat a mixture of comparative, experimental and modelling studies can be mobilised to complement descriptive scudies.

Estimating regional population size and annual harvest intensity of the sooty shearwater in New Zealand

“…The typically remote and inaccessible nature of the islands upon which many seabirds nest severely limits monitoring efforts (Knight et al 2008). Burrow-nesting behaviour has also hampered reliable population estimation because of the difficulties inherent in relating burrow entrance density to the density of breeding pairs ).…”

Cross‐cultural environmental research and management: Challenges and progress

“…It has a pleasing international flavour while being most firmly rooted in New Zealand and Canadian approaches to dilemmas of how to better share knowledge and management opportunities between their First Nations and later settler societies. Local journals have an enormously important role in supporting place-based research, but are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their service in the face of funding strictures and the globalisation of scientific reporting preferences that are encouraged by research funding models (Knight et al 2008;Roa et al 2009…”

Guidelines for cross‐cultural Participatory Action Research partnerships: A case study of a customary seabird harvest in New Zealand

“…At first it seemed to them to be mainly lost opportunity to do what scientists are trained to do best-the science itself. This diversion of time and energy to community consultation seemed to be a particular penalty for ecological studies seeking to understand population dynamics of a long-lived vertebrate living in a spatially and temporally variable environment (Moller et al 2000a;knight et al 2008). Several scientists had warned us beforehand that 10 years (the period of the initial cultural safety contract) was too short for reliable scientific inference about seabird dynamics , so the pressure to obtain quick results was acute.…”