A Conservation Assessment for the Marbled Murrelet in Southeast Alaska

DeGange, Anthony R. 1996. The marbled murrelet: a conservation assessment. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-388. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 72 p. (Shaw, Charles G., III, tech. coord.; Conservation and resource assessments for the Tongass land management plan revision). This assessment summarizes available information on the marbled murrelet in southeast Alaska and evaluates its current status. Marbled murrelets are broadly distributed across marine waters throughout southeast Alaska. They are abundant, numbering at least in the low hundreds of thousands. Marbled murrelets are believed to be at increasing risk in biogeographic provinces of the Tongass National Forest subject to extensive harvest of old-growth forests, on which they are believed to be dependent for nesting. Over the short term, risk to their persistence in the Tongass National Forest seems low; however, gaps in their nesting distribution likely will occur in some biogeographic provinces of the Tongass if current forest harvest practices are continued over the long term. Forests on private lands in southeast Alaska are being rapidly clearcut, and murrelet nesting habitat is disappearing rapidly from these lands.