About two-thirds of the puffins fledged chicks last year, Lyons said. The birds did not equal that number this year, he said, but they again had a better year than 2021 despite a less than ideal summer of hot, rainy conditions.
“The problem with climate change is these breeding failures and low breeding productivity years are now becoming chronic,” Sydeman said. “There will be fewer young birds in the population that are able to recruit into the breeding population.” The Maine puffin population once dwindled to only about 70 pairs on tiny Matinicus Rock. Hunters who pursued the birds for their meat and feathers had nearly wiped them out by the early 1900s. Stephen Kress, an Audubon ornithologist, sought to grow puffin colonies starting in the 1970s by relocating chicks from Canada to Eastern Egg Rock, another tiny island.
The adult birds in the colonies appear fairly robust, and it’s “likely the population is stable, and it could still be growing,” Lyons said.
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