How You Can Help

The main reason that the Chatham Albatross is Critically Endangered seems to be caused by two reasons. One, is that their habitat is being destroyed by severe storms. These storms destroy their habitat by removing huge amounts of the soil and vegetation, which they need to create their nests. As a result, their is lower hatching success because they now create their nests from stones, or simply give up the process altogether and lay their eggs on bare rock. As the Chatham Albatross already have problems with breeding because they have such a slow breeding process, this is a huge problem. But as we cannot control the weather, this is a difficult problem to solve.

The other problem is longlining. Longlining is when literally thousands of baited hooks are realeased into the water to catch fish. However sometimes the hooks are not eaten by their intended victims. Many seabirds take the bait, are dragged under the water, and drown. More than 300,000 seabirds are killed in this way every year. What is sad is that if people take some simple, necessary precautions, many of these birds would still be alive today.

(A picture of the hooks ready to be released into the water. There are at least 400 hooks on this ship, but usually there are thousands of hooks that are released.)

What you can do to help is this:

1. Donate money to foundations helping to save the albatross. All foundations need money to operate, or they can't do anything to help.
2. Raise awareness about the Chatham Albatrosses predicament. Ignorance is one of the biggest problems when trying to save animals because if people do not know what is happening to creatures like these, they cannot help.
3. When longlining be more careful about seabirds. The link below gives you more information about longlining and how you can help. If you follow their directions, you may save many birds lives.

BirdLife International Save the Albatross