6 hours agoShareSaveElen DaviesBBC NewsReporting fromSkomer IslandShareSave’Cautiously optimistic’Rob said the island’s 25,000 visitors each year were often “mind-blown” by the number of puffins.He warned, however, that there were novel threats facing seabirds – including bird flu and the recent marine heatwave conditions experienced around parts of the UK coastline.”I think the monitoring work is absolutely vital, it informs how these seabirds are doing, particularly in this part of Wales but also on a wider scale in terms of how puffin numbers are doing throughout the UK,” he said.”It helps us look towards policy on how these numbers can increase in the future.”They’re doing well here, but we can point to this as a good example, there’s other places where these numbers are really going down quite rapidly. “We’re quite cautiously optimistic about the numbers that we’re seeing.”They’re absolutely iconic birds and the fact that they’re on the red list is wrong for so many reasons, not least, because they used to be absolutely thriving, so we’re doing what we can to try and improve those numbers.”Related stories
