Lottery funding will help to save puffins

AN RSPB Scotland project to aid conservation efforts for puffins has been awarded £49,800 by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In recent years puffin numbers across the UK and Europe have plummeted, leading to the species being declared vulnerable to global extinction, with further declines of between 50-79 percent estimated by 2065.

Warming seas, caused by climate change, affecting puffins’ food sources, are thought to be one of the main threats to their numbers.

Thanks to a HLF grant, an innovative project to help these threatened seabirds will take place this year.

Project Puffin (UK) combines the latest technology with citizen science to tackle three of the biggest challenges hampering conservation efforts for these charismatic birds – discovering more about what puffins feed their chicks, where they go to find food and how their numbers are changing.

As more than 80 percent of the British and Irish population of puffins is found in Scotland, much of the project’s work will focus here.

Counts will take place at a number of puffin colonies, many of which have seen an alarming reduction in size. The counts are urgently required to accurately measure the extent of this decline and assess how puffins are currently faring.

GPS trackers will be carefully fitted to puffins at two sites in Scotland.