Photographers Are Crushing Puffins To Death.
I had first heard about the puffins when I started this project in 2018. In fact it was when the project was about to be released that I was sent some information about the Skomer Island puffins from one of my University lecturers, but I didn’t really know what to do with it at the time. In 2020 I have set myself some goals for the project, and its to begin using all the information I have been sent from all around the world.
Visitors heading to Skomer Island off the coast of Pembrokeshire are walking off the designated paths and standing on puffin need and killing the birds inside them in order to get better viewpoints and better selfies.
“The majority of people are really mindful, but we do have problems, particularly if visitors stray off the paths because they can collapse burrows, potentially killing any puffins that might be inside,” the trust’s Rebecca Vincent told the BBC.
“We also get a huge number of photographers and film crews on the island who may pitch up in one spot for the entire day and think that puffins are posing for them, when in reality they’re actually blocking off the entrance to their burrow, maybe even stopping them feeding their chicks.”
Each year tens of thousands of puffins nest on Skomer Island and the number has almost quadrupled in the past 30 years, even though the population is in decline elsewhere in the UK.
Wardens say “visitors have a role to play in publicising conservation work on the island, but they must take more care when taking photos.”
Tourism helps fund the conservation project, they want people to come and visit and see the project and promote the project but they also ask that the rules are followed to keep the puffins safe.
Photographers at a Welsh bird-watching hotspot are crushing puffins to death in the quest for the perfect picture, say wardens.
Sarah Parmor, Skomer’s visitor officer, told the BBC: “A lot of the island can look like it’s just vegetation and greenery, but underneath almost all of that there are actually nests, with birds still inside them.
“It can be very easy to entirely unintentionally kill or injure one of the birds if you step off the paths around the island, even for a moment.”
Throughout this project we have seen a multitude of issues, this project has evolved and continues to evolve everyday. But I will be honest, the exact same thing that is happening at Skomer is happening in Australia! I have witnessed it on Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia with the short-tailed shearwaters. The irony is however that it isn’t people wanting to take photo’s of the shearwaters, it’s the landscape images that people want to take and are crushing shearwaters in nests to get to restricted areas.
