More than US$21 billion is spent annually on biodiversity conservation. Despite their importance for preventing or slowing extinctions and preserving biodiversity, conservation interventions are rarely assessed systematically for their global impact. Islands house a disproportionately higher amount of biodiversity compared with mainlands, much of which is highly threatened with extinction. Indeed, island species make up nearly two-thirds of recent extinctions. Islands therefore are critical targets of conservation. We used an extensive literature and database review paired with expert interviews to estimate the global benefits of an increasingly used conservation action to stem biodiversity loss: eradication of invasive mammals on islands. We found 236 native terrestrial insular faunal species (596 populations) that benefitted through positive demographic and/or distributional responses from 251 eradications of invasive mammals on 181 islands. Seven native species (eight populations) were negatively impacted by invasive mammal eradication. Four threatened species had their International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List extinction-risk categories reduced as a direct result of invasive mammal eradication, and no species moved to a higher extinction-risk category. We predict that 107 highly threatened birds, mammals, and reptiles on the IUCN Red List-6% of all these highly threatened species-likely have benefitted from invasive mammal eradications on islands. Because monitoring of eradication outcomes is sporadic and limited, the impacts of global eradications are likely greater than we report here. Our results highlight the importance of invasive mammal eradication on islands for protecting the world's most imperiled fauna.conservation | restoration | invasive species | island | eradication T he rate of global species decline and extinction is rapid and likely to increase (1-4), although at least US$21.5 billion is spent annually worldwide on conservation of biodiversity (5). Improving conservation outcomes has focused largely on highlevel increases in efficiency, including the distribution of funding across countries (5), or on identifying the ecoregions, habitats, and species most in need (6). Although great strides have been made in promoting evidence-based conservation (7), systematic evaluations of the effectiveness of different actions taken to protect biodiversity at the global scale are rare, with the exception of protected areas (8).Islands occupy ∼5.5% of the terrestrial surface area but contain more than 15% of terrestrial species (9), 61% of all recently extinct species, and 37% of all critically endangered species on the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List (10). Invasive nonnative mammals (hereafter, "invasive mammals") are the main cause of animal extinctions on islands and are one of the most important threats to remaining insular biodiversity (10-12). Eradicating invasive mammals from islands is an increasingly common conservation tool and has been ...

Within the past several decades, seabird populations have been actively restored in locales where they were reduced or extirpated. Chick translocation, acoustic vocalization playbacks, and decoys are now used widely to lure breeding seabirds to restoration sites. In this first worldwide review of seabird restoration projects we evaluate the factors affecting project success or failure and recommend future directions for management. We identified 128 active restoration projects that were implemented to protect 47 seabird species in 100 locales spanning 14 countries since active restoration methods were pioneered in 1973. Active seabird restoration can achieve conservation goals for threatened and endangered species, and for species affected by anthropogenic impacts (e.g., oil spills, invasive species, fisheries). It also can be used to relocate populations from undesired breeding locales to more favorable locations, and to establish multiple breeding locations to reduce risks posed by catastrophic events. Active restoration can help to restore ecological processes, as large seabird colonies function to cycle marine nutrients to terrestrial ecosystems and create habitats for commensal species. Active restoration is especially appropriate where the original causes of decline are no longer working to suppress colony establishment and growth. Successful restoration efforts require careful planning and long-term commitments. We introduce the different forms of active seabird restoration techniques, review their utility for different seabird species, and use case studies to suggest how to optimize this technique to restore seabird species globally. Wildlife managers can use this review to guide their seabird restoration projects in the planning, implementation, and monitoring stages; tailor their restoration to seabird-specific life histories; and identify areas for further research to improve restoration utility in the future. ß 2011 The Wildlife Society.

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Several weaknesses in our understanding of long‐lived animal populations have persisted, mainly due to a prevalence of studies of a single local population at the expense of multisite studies. We performed a multisite capture–mark–resight analysis using 2050 Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica) banded as chicks on four islands (colonies) over 24 years in the Gulf of Maine, USA and Canada. Within program MARK, encounter, apparent survival, pre‐breeding movement (PBM; annual movements between colonies prior to breeding), and natal dispersal (ND) probabilities were modeled as functions of age, colony, and several covariates. Information‐theoretic model selection criteria and estimated model effect sizes were used to identify important effects and select models to estimate parameters. Encounter probabilities were extremely variable (0.10–0.95) and declined annually starting six years after bands were applied, due to changes in resighting effort, and band wear, respectively. Colony‐dependent survival probabilities increased to a peak at age six years; arithmetic means from all colonies were: 0.70 for age 0–3, 0.78 for age 4, 0.81 for age 5, and 0.84 for age 6–8 years. Low adult survival (age ≥5 years) may reflect inclusion of breeding and nonbreeding adults in our sample or a bias due to band loss and illegibility. Consistent with a density‐dependent prediction, the effect of colony size on survival was negative and acquired strong AICc support. However, this effect was inconsistent with strata effects in competing top models; the latter suggest that survival was lowest on the smallest island. The effects of origin and destination colony and origin colony size in PBM and ND probabilities resulted in important variation in these parameters. As few as 8% and as many as 57% of the puffins that we marked may have bred away from their natal colony, a signal of highly variable philopatry. Consistent with the conspecific attraction hypothesis, ND and PBM probabilities declined as the size of the origin colony increased. PBM probabilities were highest in the age 0–3 period, and these declined quickly with age thereafter. Strong colony and age effects in ND and PMB probabilities identify movement as a critical contributor to local population dynamics at our four study sites.

Seabirds consume forage fish, which are keystone species in many marine ecosystems. The Junk Food Hypothesis proposes that high-lipid prey should produce better reproductive performance by seabirds. In the Gulf of Maine, changes in the forage fish community followed rapid warming post-2005 and included a decline in high-lipid Atlantic herring Clupea harengus. We studied 3 species of alcid (Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica, razorbill Alca torda, common murre Uria aalge) over 23 yr at 3 colonies to assess changes in chick diet and its relationships with reproductive success. Puffin and razorbill chick diet changed over time; puffin diet was highly variable taxonomically, whereas razorbill diets were more consistent, showing proportional changes within fewer taxa. For puffins and razorbills, herring was replaced by sand lance Ammo dytes spp. and other taxa with lower energy density. Puffins did not require high-lipid fish to breed successfully, but diet -reproduction relationships became unpredictable following ex tremely warm winters (2013 and 2016). Razorbills and murres provisioning with low-lipid fish showed reduced chick condition and breeding success. We concluded that razorbills and murres need higher-quality diets than puffins, which more frequently exploited lower-lipid food during food shortages. However, puffin reproductive output was much more vulnerable to ocean warming owing to their longer breeding season and more varied diet. Different responses of closely-related species to changes in prey are driven by differences in chick-development strategies with clear implications for using seabirds as environmental indicators.