Puffins are making a comeback in their most important stronghold of St Kilda after the population was decimated by avian flu, experts believe.
The archipelago — 41 miles west of the main Outer Hebrides and made up of the islands of Hirta, Boreray and Soay — is home to a million seabirds and it has the largest puffin colony in Britain.
The islands’ steep cliffs and sea stacks are rich in wildlife. They form the most important seabird breeding station in northwest Europe and are home to puffin, fulmar, gannet, shearwater, petrel, kittiwake, great skua and shags.
The National Trust for Scotland, which owns the islands, has said early counts of young puffins, called pufflings, show good returns.
Its report reads: “Encouraging signs from the puffin productivity plot on Dun with pufflings recorded in 91 of the 120 burrows monitored, a vast improvement on recent years after highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and high chick mortality. Let’s hope they all make it to fledging age.”
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Conservationists recently welcomed a ban on the fishing for sandeels in Scottish waters, saying that it will help save puffins and other wildlife.
The UK and Scottish governments have both said that North Sea waters are closed to all sandeel boats. While an effective ban has been in place for boats from the UK since 2021, the regulations will now include fishing vessels from other countries, including those in the EU.
Sandeels are an important prey for many animals, including haddock, harbour porpoise and puffins. It is hoped that the ban will benefit those and many other North Sea species.
Since 2021 commercial fishing for sandeel was carried out entirely by European boats and no quota was allocated to UK vessels. Danish fishermen have backed an EU challenge to the British ban, claiming they have lost half their fishing grounds.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said any backtracking on the ban would threaten some birds’ population resilience.
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St Kilda is the UK’s only double Unesco World Heritage Site, where the last permanent human inhabitants left more than 90 years ago.
Set 99 miles from the west coast of mainland Scotland, evidence indicates that the archipelago was occupied continuously for more than 4,000 years until the last 36 inhabitants were brought to the mainland in 1930, but since 1957 there has been a continual presence of researchers, conservationists, volunteers and military personnel.
In April 2016 Rachel Johnson, the last indigenous resident of St Kilda, died. She was born in Hirta in 1922 and was eight years old when the island was evacuated.
Johnson settled in Clydebank and lived there until she died. The National Trust of Scotland said her death was “an end of an era”.
