You can use it for research or reference. To access the current site visit current site.
Rhinoceros Auklets breed in colonies on offshore islands of the temperate North Pacific. Because they visit their colonies primarily at night and nest in deep burrows, it is difficult to monitor their abundance. Counts of occupied burrows suggest that the population's abundance has changed little relative to about 1970. However, disruptions in marine food webs and predator introductions have affected reproduction and survival. Rhinoceros Auklets are highly susceptible to mortality from entanglement in commercial gillnets. This species has been identified as a priority for conservation and/or stewardship in one or more Bird Conservation Region Strategies in Canada.
Predation from introduced raccoons has reduced counts at Helgesen and Saunders Islands in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Gaston and Dechesne 1996), but abundance in this region is generally increasing otherwise. Also, variability in reproductive success is related to disruptions in the marine food web (Gaston et al. 2009). Specifically, spring phytoplankton concentrations and subsequent recruitment of Pacific sandlance, Ammodytes hexapterus, an important component of the diet fed to nestlings, appear to be strong predictors of auklet breeding success, and vary among years in response to changing wind patterns (Borstad et al. 2011).
Environment and Climate Change Canada and partners have developed Bird Conservation Region Strategies in each of Canada’s Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs). In these strategies, selected species are identified as priorities for one or more of the following reasons:
Select any of the sub-regions below to view the BCR strategy for additional details.
