The Dark Side of the Artificial Lights: Effects on the Canarian Seabirds

a sure death by collision with vehicles, predation by cats, dogs, or starvation, and they have been returned to the wild1. However, this percentage is overestimated as people tend to rescue live fledglings. During the last six decades, humans have globally transformed the natural nightscapes by the use of artificial night lighting. The resulting light pollution is responsible for mortality among many seabird species which show nocturnal activity on their breeding grounds. On Tenerife, the largest island of the Canary archipelago, near 10,000 birds from nine species were found grounded during a 9-year period, the majority being Cory’s Shearwaters Calonectris diomedea (93.4%), Bulwer’s Petrels Bulweria bulwerii (3.4%) and Macaronesian Shearwaters Puffinus baroli (1.5%)1 (Fig