Marbled Murrelet Habitat Management – Considerations for the new Forest and Range Practices Act

Marbled murrelets are small seabirds that live along the Pacific coast of North America. Unlike most other threatened species, MAMU are relatively abundant; perhaps 65,000 live along the coast of BC, another 18,000 along the Washington, Oregon and California coasts and some 500,000 in coastal Alaska.v Nevertheless, MAMU have been listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) since 1990.

Unlike many threatened species, MAMU are included because of population trend, not population size. Although trend data is very sparse, all anecdotal evidence, and most of the quantitative data, indicates declines in population over the past century.