Puffin Habitats

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I congratulate my friend, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan). We largely co-operate on defence matters, but we can now add puffins to our areas of co-operation. I suspect we will both be speaking in the combat air strategy debate tomorrow; I like her analogy of puffins as fighter jets and I look forward to hearing her mention puffins in the debate on the Tempest programme tomorrow.

It is true that every bird matters, but as we have heard, every puffin matters, too. Before I get into the detail, I would like to share my favourite puffin story. As we have heard, we all have our favourite. Mine relates to the puffins on the Skellig islands, off the west coast of Ireland. Sci-fi nerds may already know what I am about to talk about. The Skellig islands were used as a filming location for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”. There were so many puffins as they were trying to film Luke Skywalker’s last hangout that they could not airbrush the puffins out of the movie, so they decided to turn them into their very own Star Wars species and the porgs were born. Watching “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”, Members will see plenty of porgs around Luke Skywalker’s coastal hut—and they are indeed puffins. That is a bit of bedtime watching for the hon. Lady.

It is true, as we have heard, that human activity is affecting the habitats of many of our planet’s valuable wildlife species. Through irreversible climate change, habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, we are making the survival of species that we love and appreciate increasingly difficult. In a debate last month, we heard about the cruel practice of the netting of bird nesting sites, preventing sea birds from nesting on some cliff faces. In that debate I made it clear that we must not keep squeezing nature into smaller and smaller spaces. Given what we have heard about puffin habitats, they are already in very small spaces geographically.

Britain is home to around 10% of the world’s puffin population, with nearly 600,000 breeding pairs, often found in clusters around the coastline of the British Isles. It is brilliant to hear of the experiences of various hon. Members with the puffin populations in their own part of the world. The right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) spoke about Skomer island. The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) spoke about the west coast of Scotland. In the area that I represent, the south-west, we have puffin populations on Lundy island off the north coast and on the Isles of Scilly.

On Lundy we have had a similar experience to that mentioned by the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed in relation to tackling invasive species. On Lundy we are beginning to have a puffin comeback. After many years of puffins being on the brink of eradication, a programme to deal with the accidental introduction of rats from visiting boats has started showing good results. Thanks to the Lundy seabird recovery project, puffin numbers are now increasing. This is a great example of how targeted action can bring great results, correcting the damage that humans have done to these vital habitats.

Puffins are found in small clusters, which leaves them more susceptible to changes in local fish populations, as we heard from the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally). Puffins are on the RSPB’s red list of conservation importance, which means that urgent action is needed to prevent their decline. In the Isles of Scilly, we have witnessed the success of the seabird recovery project—the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) is not present today, but he asked me to mention that on his behalf. That EU-funded project has done some great work in removing items of rubbish and in eradicating invasive species on the islands, leading to the fast recovery of the populations of the Manx shearwater and the puffin. Will the Minister, in his remarks, set out what plans the Government have to replace specific EU-funded schemes, such as that one, which deal with rare bird habitat protection?

The RSPB describes the main threat to puffins as a change in the distribution and numbers of small fish. Drastic changes in the numbers of small fish in the local area around puffin habitats can occur if there is increased pollution, as we have heard in the debate, whether from plastic or other pollutants such as oil. Overfishing in those areas also poses a threat, with sustainable fishing paramount for the survival of seabird species.

The Minister will be aware that his Conservative colleague the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) has tabled an amendment to the Fisheries Bill to ban sand eel fishing. As the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed noted, sand eels are a key part of a puffin’s diet, so I would be grateful if the Minister set out the Government’s position on sand eel fishing and on that amendment.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend have any thoughts about the additional assistance that inshore fishermen could provide in making the environment for puffins free from pollution, and in supporting their habitats?

[Luke Pollard]

Yes. Fishers have several important roles to play, one of which is dealing with ghost gear. Although puffins are small birds, they are susceptible to eating plastic. Dealing with ghost gear—discarded fishing gear—is an important part of addressing that problem; I know that fishers in my hon. Friend’s constituency and mine are taking steps to deal with it. Not only is it an expensive cost to the business, but it presents a real risk to wildlife and bird habitats. I urge my hon. Friend to keep encouraging fishers in her constituency to tackle plastic pollution, as I know she does already.

On the subject of plastic pollution, I must mention nurdles. Several hon. Members have noted incredibly worrying issues with puffins’ diet and their ability to survive in the long term. As well as eating sand eels and other fish, puffins also eat plastic. A variety of studies of dead puffins washed up on the beach have found that, when cut open, their stomachs prove to be full of nurdles. Nurdles are small pieces of plastic that can be melted together to make larger items, but they are also a consequence of macroplastics being broken down. Puffins’ stomachs, like those of other seabirds, are full of plastics, which prevent them from getting the necessary nutritional value from their food.

Just as we have a limited understanding of what puffins get up to at sea, we lack scientific knowledge about the effect of plastics on certain bird populations, of which puffins are a good example. I know that there has been much research in Scotland about seabirds and plastics, but I would be grateful if the Minister set out his vision for dealing with the scientific evidence base. If we had a true understanding of the effect of plastics on puffins and other seabirds, it would make it easier for the public to get behind action.

Seabirds are protected by a network of marine special protection areas, and I am pleased to hear that the Government have granted the application for such an area in the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. It is also good that the eider duck has been included among the protected bird species; I have heard the hon. Lady speak several times about its importance, and it should not be left out.

I would like a network of national marine parks to be created around the UK, which would provide an opportunity to put our complex system of protected marine areas into plain English. We already have a network of marine conservation zones, designated European marine sites and sites of special scientific interest—the list goes on. However, there are so many forms and designations of marine protection that it makes it harder for the public to access those sites. The Government’s review of national parks gives us a real opportunity for the development of national marine parks. The Minister will know that Plymouth City Council is leading work, which enjoys cross-party support at a local level, to establish the first national marine park in Plymouth Sound. Protecting more marine areas would contribute to greater understanding and public awareness—the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire mentioned the Puffarazzi project—and would underline the importance of taking care when visiting puffin habitats.

I am very pleased that the House recently agreed to Labour’s motion to declare a climate emergency, after an important debate that showed that this place is taking climate change seriously. I know that hon. Members from all parties will have visited climate change protesters at the Time Is Now climate protest today. Although we need to decarbonise our economy, we must not think of climate change as being only about carbon; we need to think equally about how to protect and conserve coastal habitats, bird nesting sites and feed, as we have heard today.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed for giving us a chance to tell our favourite puffin stories; I hope that more people will be able to do so over the weeks and months ahead. I know that the Minister has a full to-do list at his Department, but I hope that he will take seriously the concerns that have been voiced about our wonderful, brilliant, comical puffins, and take note that their decline is a sign of humanity’s intervention regarding our wildlife. We need to do more to protect puffins, which will also save and protect other important habitats and seabird populations.