Photo courtesy Jeff Hughes

Marbled murrelets, members of the Alcid family (the northern counterparts of the penguins), nest high in old growth trees and forage on schooling fish and small crustaceans away from shore. In the past 20 years, populations of marbled murrelets in Puget Sound have declined 96 percent. It is now a rare species in the inland waters of Washington and British Columbia. Loss of old growth nesting habitat, entanglement in drift gillnets, negative effects from exposure to contamination, and natural and anthropogenic (human-induced) variability in prey availability are concerns for this species. They are listed as threatened by Washington state and under the US Federal ESA (1992) and the Canadian Committee for the Status of Endangered Wildlife (COSEWIC) (2000) and are candidates for extirpated, endangered, or threatened status in British Columbia (red list). For more information about the natural history of this bird and recovery efforts in Canada visit the Canadian Species of Concern Website.