The birds were behaving strangely. Normally, the summer months would be a productive breeding season for the seabirds known as living on the island of Stora Karls枚 in the Baltic Sea. But, of course, 2020 wasn鈥檛 a normal year.
Lockdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic dramatically reduced human activity around the world. And, in many cases, .
The guillemots don鈥檛 seem to be one of them.
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Jonas Hentati-Sundberg at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and his colleagues say that the tourists who travel to the iconic seabird colony every summer may have been acting as unwitting 鈥済uardians鈥� for the guillemots that live and breed there.
Without tourists around, another bird flocked in: the white-tailed eagle聽鈥� numbers of them jumped sevenfold.
Although the eagles didn鈥檛 prey on the guillemots, analysis of CCTV footage shows that their presence caused the guillemots to 鈥減anic鈥� and frequently flee their cliffside perches in droves. This disrupted mating and allowed other birds, like gulls and crows, to swoop in and eat unattended eggs. Other eggs fell from the steep ledges.
鈥淎s a conservationist, it鈥檚 kind of heartbreaking to see these birds suffer for the first time actually in all the years I鈥檝e been there,鈥� says Sundberg.
Compared with previous years, the guillemots successfully hatched 26 per cent fewer young than usual and had the worst breeding season ever recorded, particularly in areas the researchers visited less frequently. In one subcolony, not even one chick hatched.
For Sundberg, the story of the guillemots complicates the 鈥済eneral notion that people are just messing up things鈥�.
鈥淚 think this illustrates that we are so deeply embedded in ecological relationships and in ecosystems, and in many, many different ways,鈥� he says. 鈥淎 much more fruitful [conservation] strategy for the future is to try and to understand what is actually our role鈥� Because stepping back will not solve all our problems.鈥�
Reference: Biological Conservation
