Destinations
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Madeira 7 – 14 November 2012
Conservation Project
Europe's rarest breeding seabird and once thought to be extinct, the Zino's Petrel or freira, Pterodroma madeira, is endemic to Madeira. The Freira Conservation Project (FCP), founded in 1986, is a group of people and institutions working on the conservation of Zino's petrels, especially by controlling its main predator, the rat. The FCP has overseen a steady increase in numbers nesting in the central massif of Madeira. We will not see them as they can only be seen between April and August. Dr Frank Zino, the son of Alec Zino who rediscovered the bird and named it as a separate species, is the FCP's president and will meet us for a brief talk about Zino's petrels.
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In August 2010, a massive forest fire on the island of Madeira killed several breeding adults and 65% of this year’s chicks of Zino’s Petrel, Europe's rarest seabird. Read more here from BirdLife International, which launched an appeal.
We also accepted donations through the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust. Topped up with Gift Aid, we raised £288 for Dr Zino and his team, working at the sharp end for Zino's petrel conservation in Madeira. This, plus money raised from conservation contributions from the holiday in November 2011, will be spent on dataloggers to be attached to Zino's petrels and other seabirds. These will gather vital information on the movements of seabirds at sea.
The Freira Conservation Project blog here includes reports from Frank Zino on visits to the breeding ledges on Manga Grande on 16 September and 14 October 2010, the latter to ring the one surviving youngster. Also on the blog is the presentation given by Catarina & Hugo, from Madeira Wind Birds and Honeyguide leaders, to the seventh Iberian Congress of Seabirds that took place near Bilbao in October/November 2010.
More recent additions are about visits to the breeding grounds in spring/summer 2011.
SUPPORTING
The Freira Conservation Project
Zino's petrel (Francis Zino)
More information about Zino's petrel here.
Zino's petrel Species Action Plan
Honeyguide's donations have gone towards the cost of dataloggers attached to Zino's petrels, to chart their movements away from Madeira. Our holiday report from February 2009 (here) explains more of this - see the thank you letter from Dr Zino at the end of the report.
