A good year for Laysan ducks

This is a video about Laysan albatrosses.

From BirdLife:

Critical duck bouncing back

18-01-2008

The Critically Endangered Laysan Duck Anas laysanensis had a very successful 2007 breeding season according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists. The year’s total of adults and fledglings on the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) has now risen to about 200 individuals.

This is only the third year since this species was translocated. In 2004 and 2005, 42 individuals made a 750-mile voyage across the Pacific and were released at Midway Atoll NWR, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to increase the species’s geographic distribution and reduce its risk of extinction. With the translocated population more than quadrupling in only three years, researchers are now optimistic that the project will help promote the conservation of this Critically Endangered species.

The Laysan Duck occurs only within the North western Hawaiian Islands’ Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument established in 2006. Laysan Ducks were once widespread across the Hawaiian Islands, but by 1860, they were extirpated from all but Laysan Island, a low lying island (10 metres above sea level) and home to millions of seabirds. Laysan Island is also protected as part of the Hawaiian Islands NWR.

Laysan ducks dying: here.

Related articles

• Albatross, Plastic, and the Undoing of Generations (thomvandooren.wordpress.com)
• Ecotourism ends at Midway Atoll (stripes.com)
• Lawsuit filed to keep sea turtles from going extinct (greenerideal.com)