Natural History Wanderings

BirdLife International reports

A new scientific paper co-authored by BirdLife and Partners[1] finds that nearly 200,000 seabirds die annually as bycatch in European waters – including 150,000 in EU waters. Among these, six seabird species threatened by extinction in the region are frequently recorded as bycatch. Whilst shocking, these figures paint only a partial picture. The true scale of this tragic loss could be much higher. In this study, bycatch estimates were nonexistent for more than a third of the coastal states studied, and available estimates rarely included the entirety of a country’s fishing fleet.

Read more Bycatch tragedy: we are losing 200,000 seabirds annually! – BirdLife International