Population status

Common Murre
(Uria aalge)

The most reliable source of monitoring data for Common Murres in Canada come from Environment Canada’s Seabird Colony Counts, during which individuals are counted at their breeding colonies. Monitoring data are available from a number of colonies in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, but the number of years of observation varies and some large, important colonies are not represented. For those colonies included in the counts, slight increases in abundance have been observed since about 1970. Similarly, sporadic counts at Funk Island, Newfoundland, Canada's largest colony of Common Murres, indicate slight increases in abundance from 396,000 pairs in 1972 to 435,000 pairs in 2006 (Gaston et al. 2009, and references therein) and 470,000 pairs in 2009 (S. Wilhelm, Environment Canada, pers. comm.). In contrast, Common Murres breeding along the Pacific coast of Canada may have decreased in abundance (Gaston et al. 2009), but comprise a small proportion of the national population. At a national level, the population has changed little or has perhaps increased slightly in abundance since about 1970. However, reliability of this assessment is considered to be only moderate owing to regional variation in trends and poor survey coverage for some important colonies. For more information, please refer to the 2014 Population Status of Migratory Game Birds in Canada report.

 

Analysis of Seabird Colony Counts

Additional information on: Analysis of Seabird Colony Counts

Table 1: Population trends by geographic area
Geographic areaTime PeriodAnnual trend (%) Table 1 - footnote 1 Limits
LowerUpper
Canada1965-20100.50.30.7
 

References