Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate – Inside Climate News

Puffins on the coast of Fife, Scotland (by Magnus Hagdorn CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr).

The number of ocean going birds has declined 70 percent since the 1950s. New research shows how projects bringing them back can also bolster ocean ecosystems that sequester carbon.

Seabirds evolved about 60 million years ago, as Earth’s continents drifted toward their current positions and modern oceans took shape. They spread across thousands of undisturbed islands in the widening seas. And as flying dinosaurs and giant omnivorous sea reptiles died out, seabirds also started filling an ecological niche as ecosystem engineers…