Recent surveys on its coastal Patagonian wintering grounds indicate that the Endangered Hooded Grebe Podiceps gallardoi has declined by 40% in the last seven years and this, along with alarming new threats detected on its breeding grounds during 2011, indicate action is now urgently required to prevent the rapidly increasing threat of its extinction.
In response to these worrying findings, Aves Argentinas (BirdLife in Argentina) has mounted a wide-ranging offensive to protect this highly-threatened migratory species from further decline. In support, we are launching an international online appeal through the BirdLife Preventing Extinctions Programme to help fund the urgently required conservation action that they have already begun.
We are also seeking BirdLife Species Champions for the Hooded Grebe. If you or your company would like to find out about this opportunity please email species.champions@birdlife.org.
Discovered only as recently as 1974, Hooded Grebe has declined by as much as 80% in the last 30 years and as a result of surveys conducted in 2006 and 2009, the species was uplisted by BirdLife to Endangered on the IUCN Red List in May 2009. Recent counts on the wintering grounds last year, suggest the decline is steepening further.
“Our teams started to become really worried when we realised that there was more than one cause to tackle if we were to conserve the Hooded Grebe”, said Gustavo Costa, President of Aves Argentinas.
In many of the lakes in the grebe’s core distribution, exotic trout have been introduced for industrial fish production. “Trout rearing has reached the most isolated places, and this industry is threatening not only the future of the grebe but also the rest of the wildlife present in those environments”, Gustavo Costa added. Also evident are the increasing numbers of Kelp Gull Larus dominicanus, a known predator of the grebe that has benefited from both the fish industry and poor waste management at human settlements.
As if these problems were not already enough to push this struggling species over the edge, a breeding colony which Aves Argentinas was studying at Laguna El Cervecero, Santa Cruz Province in March 2011, was devastated by a sinister and ferocious invasive pest that is now advancing in western Patagonia: the American mink, Neovison vison. More than 30 breeding adult Hooded Grebes were found killed by mink at this one site, and a further 40-plus eggs were abandoned.
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