Conservation in flight

摘要

The discovery of breeding pairs of Gould's petrels on ontague Island signifies the success of two conservation projects separated by hundreds of kilometres.RARELY DOES THE person who helps to list a species as endangered get to witness that populationbegin to recover and then see it removed from the list, all within 20 years. Yet this is exactly what conservation scientist Nicholas Carlile and his colleagues achieved with the Gould's petrel.This small seabird has breeding populations on a number of Pacific islands, including New Caledonia. At its lowest point during the early 1990s, the Australian population dwindled to 250 breeding pairs. Despite the odds, these last bastions of the species met each October at a breeding location off Port Stephens, NSW, on a rugged outcrop called Cabbage Tree Island. They gathered here in two rainfor-ested gullies to breed and produce about 50 chicks, most of which would not survive to maturity.