ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE

PROTECTION STATUS: Threatened

YEAR PLACED ON LIST: 1992

CRITICAL HABITAT: 3,887,800 acres of inland nesting habitat in Washington, Oregon, and California designated in 1996

RECOVERY PLAN: 1997

RANGE: Pacific Coast of North America from the Aleutian Archipelago and southern Alaska to central California just south of the San Francisco Bay

THREATS: Habitat loss due to commercial logging of old-growth forests, climate change affecting ocean conditions, incidental bycatch in commercial fishing nets, increases in predator populations, oil spills, and chemical dumping and other marine pollution

POPULATION TREND: In 1997, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that the marbled murrelet population in the Pacific Northwest was declining by 4 to 7 percent each year. More recent demographic models indicate that populations in Washington, Oregon, and California could be extinct within the next 50 years.

Marbled murrelet photo by Gus Vliet Van, USFWS