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Assessing the population of this species is difficult. The world's largest known breeding colony, with over three million pairs, is in Newfoundland. Although some data on this and other colonies are available from Seabird Colony Counts, the results vary widely among colonies and are difficult to interpret at the national level. Breeding colony estimates vary widely (see Huntington et al. 1996), and many breeding colonies may be as yet undiscovered. However, updated information on breeding pair estimates is now available for three major breeding colonies in the Atlantic Region: Gull Island (179,743 pairs, censused in 2012; Canadian Wildlife Service [CWS] unpublished data), Great Island (134,139 pairs censused in 2011, Wilhelm et al. 2015), Country Island (11,990 pairs, censused in 2013, CWS unpublished data), and results suggest that these large colonies have undergone significant declines (by about 50%) since the late 1990s/early 2000s. This contrasts with the previous assessment, which revealed that large Leach's Storm-Petrel colonies appeared stable in the northwestern Atlantic from the 1970s to early 2000s, and only small colonies showed declines (Robertson et al. 2006). However, the now second largest colony in the northwest Atlantic, Grand Colombier, located in the French waters of St. Pierre et Miquelon, off Newfoundland’s southeast coast, appears to be stable (Lormée et al. 2012). The largest colony in the world, Baccalieu Island, located off Newfoundland’s east coast was censused in 2013 and analyses are underway. While current information from some of these large breeding colonies suggests significant decreases in abundance, there are still many smaller colonies in the Atlantic Region for which current information is not available; little information exists for storm-petrels breeding in Quebec and British Columbia. Thus, current data are considered insufficient to determine the population status of Leach's Storm Petrel in Canada.
