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Bertarelli Foundation
The Marine Science programme
prioritises conducting science
that has direct applications for
management. Here we provide an
example to demonstrate how our
research is relevant and used for
improved marine management.
Management
Impacts
Important bird and
biodiversity areas
Seabirds are declining globally and are one of the
most threatened group of birds. The western Indian
Ocean supports ~19 million breeding seabirds of 30
species, making it one of the most significant tropical
seabird assemblages in the world. The Important Bird
and Biodiversity Area (IBA) programme is a method of
identifying the most important places for birds based on
globally agreed standardised criteria and thresholds.
The Chagos Archipelago has around 280,000 pairs of
breeding seabirds from 18 species per year. Four species
breed in IBA qualifying numbers: tropical shearwater,
red-footed booby, sooty tern (Onychoprion fuscatus)
and lesser noddy (Anous tenuirostris). Data from 1975
and 1996 were used to designate 10 islands as terrestrial
IBAs. In 2020, based on more recent data, programme
scientists (Carr et al., 2020) redefined the IBAs into
four island clusters: Eastern Diego Garcia island group,
eastern Peros Banhos island group, Nelson Island, and
Western Great Chagos Bank island group (figure 1). They
recommended that IBA monitoring should be done every
four years, with two breeding seabird censuses of all
islands undertaken six months apart, one in January/
February and the other in July/August.