Endangered
Atlantic Petrel
Pterodroma incerta
The Atlantic petrel is a gadfly petrel endemic to the South Atlantic Ocean.
Appearance
Adults are about 43 cm long, powerful, large, stocky, dark in color with white belly. Their head can appear to be grey in worn plumage. Brown undercoating of wings and tail.
Range and habitat
The nesting locations are between 50 and 300 meters above sea level, located on cliffsides on Gough Island and formerly, at Tristan da Cunha it was upwards of 700 meters. The Atlantic petrel is a gadfly petrel endemic to the South Atlantic Ocean. It breeds in enormous colonies on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island, and ranges at sea from Brazil to Namibia, with most records at sea being to the west of the breeding islands, and along the subtropical convergence.
It is restricted to just two breeding islands and has declined historically due to exploitation for food. Gough Island was the location of study, since other islands are inaccessible due to the steep cliffs.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Although the species exists in large numbers, the world population being estimated at around 5 million birds, it is listed as endangered by the IUCN. This is making their large population numbers decrease rapidly. Due to reproduction mortality, this species can become locally extinct making their home range smaller.
The Atlantic petrel is currently threatened by introduced house mice, that prey on recently-hatched chicks. Given their small breeding range, severe hurricanes also pose an intermittent threat to breeding populations.
Atlantic Petrel is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Atlantic Petrel, Wikidata item Q780365. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
