Light pollution, strong winds push storm petrels off path, needing rescue from the public

Newfoundland and Labrador is home to the world's largest Leach's storm-petrel colonies in the world on Baccalieu Island. Over the past few decades though the number of birds on that island have declined in the millions. for a variety of reasons. Petrels are the smallest marine bird that we have here in the province. They strand because of light pollution and because of strong winds. So right now, in the fall, they're migrating. Their fledglings are leaving for the first time. And when we have strong winds that push them onshore, combined with bright lights from businesses, schools, all those kinds of places, they end up getting stranded and disoriented by the lights. Our main goal is to rescue as many petrels as possible and give them a second chance. But also to advocate for the reasons why they strand with talking to municipalities and sports groups and all these organizations that could see petrels that could help and spread that education and awareness because petrels are nocturnal. We only have them a couple months of the year and if people don't know about them they're not going to do anything. When I was 12 I found a petrel. That was the first time I ever seen one. Um, I didn't know until the next day after I attempted to release it on my own that it wasn't going to be such an easy thing, you know, for them to get back up on their own, so, um, when I seen this afterwards, I wanted to take part in it, but I didn't really realize how many we'd find dead or how big of an issue it was. If you're in an area where there's a lot of light pollution, then absolutely even just taking a walk around your building at work or, you know, your area, you know, maybe in your community you might have a ball field or somewhere with a lot of light pollution. Just even taking a little stroll through there, looking, you could find a bird, you could save a life. And I think the more people that are aware of what's happening will definitely benefit the population. The small inconveniences like turning off your lights, people don't realize how big of an impact that's going to have and they don't realize that they could help in those ways. They're such lovable creatures. They're small, they're adorable, they're very friendly. Certainly. You know up until actually last weekend I never even had a petrel try to you know bite or scratch me and even then they don't have any physical features really that could do any damage to you. A lot of the time you know they'll cuddle up in your hand. You know they're very sweet creatures. If you can find something in your life that fills your cup, then by all means, like, you know, pursue it. And this fills my cup. It really does. Like, when I find a petrel and I know, like, because I found him, like, he's not going to face the same fate as the other probably five, six, seven, eight dead ones that I picked up that day. It's like, feels really good. It feels like, okay, you know, this work is worthwhile. Getting out there and getting involved, it really helps you appreciate the other life we have on Earth.