Rare bird caught up in spill

Volunteers are combing beaches for stricken birds

The first critically endangered bird to be caught up in the Prestige oil spill was reported on Friday.

Approximately every three years the coastline of Europe is being devastated by a major oil spill

Miguel Naveso, BirdLife International

The Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO) said its wildlife recovery programme had taken in a Balearic shearwater for cleaning.

The species (Puffinus mauretannicus), which flies through the affected area during migration, has seen its numbers plummet in recent years.

Bird experts fear the shearwater's breeding record will be further eroded by the ecological disaster now engulfing the Galicia region of north-west Spain.

Boxing up birds

The SEO says the latest data from 21 November show that 260 oiled birds and 29 dead oiled-birds have been collected and sent for cleaning so far.

Balearic shearwater: Numbers have have plummeted
Illustration by Juan Varela

This is in addition to 250 birds recorded oiled on the coast by volunteers earlier this week. The most affected species are razorbill, gannet and guillemot.

Volunteers from the SEO, the Worldwide Fund for Nature and other groups are packing the oiled birds into boxes for transport to a specialist treatment centre in the main regional city of La Coruna.

"Most of them are dying, completely blackened," said one of the SEO coordinators, Carlota Viada Sauleda.

Cat predators

The oil destroys the waterproofing in the birds' plumage, leaving them with no protection against the cold. Oil is also getting into the birds' gullets, making drinking, eating and sometimes even breathing very difficult.

The oil gets in the gullet and stops the bird from drinking and eating

But the news that the Balearic shearwater has also now been affected will alarm ornithologists. There are estimated to be just 1,750 to 2,125 pairs in existence - a decline of 50% on pair numbers nine years ago.

Extinction is now thought to be a very real possibility.

The bird was recently identified as critically endangered during the preparation of the new edition of the Spanish Red List of Threatened Birds.

The population declines appear to have resulted principally from predation by cats and other terrestrial carnivores.

Accidental death in the long lines of fishing boats, habitat destruction and pollution have also been implicated.

Urgent need

BirdLife International, the global umbrella group for national organisations like the SEO, said the European Commission had to bring forward the introduction of safety measures recommended after the Erika spill off France in 2000.

"The Prestige oil spill shows that it is imperative the European Commission urgently adopt new measures that strengthen marine safety and liability regulations to help prevent future oil spills such as the Prestige disaster," Miguel Naveso, head of BirdLife International's European Community Office in Brussels, told BBC News Online.

"Approximately every three years the coastline of Europe is being devastated by a major oil spill.

"On this basis we will have to suffer another four spills before single-hulled tankers are due to be phased-out in 2015."