Balearic shearwater [SEP] IUCN conservation status
can destroy or alter their natural breeding habitat (e.g. producing light pollution around nesting colonies ), and also from introduced animals such as cats and rats. The discovery of yelkouan shearwaters in the Menorcan colony suggests that hybridization may also pose a problem (Genovart "et al." 2005); the Balearic shearwater is considered critically endangered with extinction by the IUCN. Recent models estimate a mean decrease of 7.4% per year and a mean extinction time of 40.4 years. This equates to an ongoing decline of more than 80%
. The two living Mediterranean lineages had probably separated before the end of the Pliocene (c. 2 million years ago), as indicated by molecular differences and the putative direct ancestor of the Balearic shearwater, the Ibizan fossil "Puffinus nestori" from the Late Pliocene or Early Pleistocene.
Ecology and status.
Yelkouan shearwaters breed on islands and coastal cliffs in the eastern and central Mediterranean. Most winter in that sea, but small numbers enter the Atlantic in late summer. This species nests in burrows which are only visited at