Marbled Murrelet Videos Provide Rare Glimpse Of Elusive Seabird

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today released two videos about the threatened marbled murrelet, a diving seabird protected in Oregon, Washington and California under the Endangered Species Act.
 
The first video highlights the biological curiosities of the marbled murrelet, which spends most of its life at sea but nests in coastal old growth forests.  The second video examines the population status and threats to the population, which in the Pacific Northwest has continued to decline since it was listed in 1992.
 
“The marbled murrelet is a mysterious bird,” said Deanna Lynch, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist working on the recovery of the species. “Its whole life is really designed to be cryptic.”
 
 The elusiveness of the marbled murrelet is due to its ability to fly at speeds well over 80 mph and its habit of venturing inland only during dusk and dawn. The species spends most of its time at sea or hidden in the forest canopy. “People can’t find them,” Lynch said.
 
 “In the last nine to 10 years we have been doing a lot of at-sea surveys to document the population declines,” Lynch said. “We have about a 27% decline over the last decade throughout the range, with a 45% decline alone in Washington.”
 
The declines are primarily due to past and ongoing removal of nesting habitats and impacts at sea, which are not as well understood.  The Fish and Wildlife Service is working with state, federal and tribal agencies to stabilize and increase the population throughout its range. To learn more about the threats to marbled murrelet and the Service’s recovery efforts, please watch the following short videos:
 
http://www.fws.gov/pacific/t/?id=381