This is Bird Note.

When Peter Hodem learned that few people were studying the tufted puffin in the Pacific Northwest,

he began delving into what was known about the local puffin population.

And so when we realized that even with the minimal information available that the species was

declining worryingly, we needed to almost start from the beginning.

Peter, who's a professor at the University of Puget Sound, says that while the biggest

tufted puffin populations are further north in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, it's important

to study the smaller number that breed off the coast of Washington and Oregon. The challenges

facing the species at the fringes of where they live could be the same ones that will affect

the core population further north in the future.

They first start to show signs of decline on the periphery.

It frequently signals a more fundamental problem affecting the species, and that first manifests itself on the peripheries where those populations have less of a buffer.

They can't accommodate challenges as well because conditions aren't as favorable as they are in

the core of their range. So we're seeing parallels to what we see in the Pacific Northwest here

over in Japan and Russia and even in parts of Alaska.

And picking up these kinds of early warning signals could help biologists plan for a better

future for tufted puffins.

For bird note, I'm Ariana Rimmel.