Keep Funding Important Research that Helps and Saves the Guillemot Sea Birds

Please sign and share this petition worldwide in an effort to ask the UK & Wales not to shut down the all important research and its funding executed by Professor Tim Birkhead; work he has been doing for the health and well-being of the Guillemot sear birds for more than 42 years. His work proved very successful for the welfare of these and other birds throughout the British Isles. Don't let these countries suddenly stop funding his research and crucial work in saving these Guillemot Sea Birds.

Professor Tim Birkhead, a 64-year-old professor of zoology at Sheffield University, has been monitoring guillemots for 42 years with intriguing results. His research has provided key information about the wellbeing of the sea birds’ population around the British Isles and has also produced important insights into the health of our seas. Now his crucial work is threatened with closure due to funding from the Natural Resources Wales Department.

Professor Birkhead states that “We have built an extremely important database of guillemot population parameters and breeding rates, which tells a great deal about variations in numbers of these birds, about the health of their populations and about the health of our seas in general. But that entire database is now under threat merely to save a modest amount of money.”He adds that since his research began so many years ago, these birds are now mating an average of 2-1/2 weeks earlier than usual. “That is a clear signal that climate change is having a direct impact on the behavior of these sea birds. It was a ridiculously ambitious task, I realized later. Guillemots do not start breeding until they are seven years old, so you cannot hope to get an accurate picture of their reproductive success until you have amassed many years of data. That is why I decided to maintain the survey every year since then and so have been involved in studying guillemots for all these decades." Now his efforts will be tossed aside while the birds and the oceans are in peril.

“These birds are excellent indicators of the health of the ocean. I have had a very good response to that appeal, but it is a shame that research of such importance has to be funded in this hand-to-mouth manner,” Professor Birkhead states further. Let's help him continue his crucial work for the environment, the birds and the healthy oceans. Please sign and share this petition worldwide in an effort to ask the UK & Wales not to shut down the all important research and its funding executed by Professor Tim Birkhead; work he has been doing for the health and well-being of the Guillemot sear birds for more than 42 years. His work proved very successful for the welfare of these and other birds throughout the British Isles. Don't let these countries suddenly stop funding his research and crucial work in saving these Guillemot Sea Birds, the environment and the oceans.