Common Murre Population Monitoring in the Chiswell Islands, AK, 1989-2001

We censused the Chiswell Islands murre colonies three years after the last population counts were made using the same methods used during the 1998 restoration monitoring project. Counts were pooled with the 1998 estimate and earlier 1989-2002 U.S. Fish and WIldlife Service and 1991 Dames & Moore scores, and analyzed for trends. Results were similar to 1998: the average score was almost the same as our earlier estimate, which strengthened the previously discovered negative trend. The 2001 data confirmed that a population decline had occurred sometime after 1992, and comparing numbers of birds by island and year indicated that the decline did not result form changes as just one of the colonies. Similarities between the 1998 and 2001 estimates also suggested that population size remained relatively stable after 1998.