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BTO Blueline
CORMORANT
Phalacrocorax carbo
Cormorant © Colin Varndell
 
Conservation listings
Europe: no SPEC category (favourable conservation status in Europe, not concentrated in Europe)
UK: amber (breeding localised, >20% of European population in winter)
Long-term trend
UK: increase
Distribution maps
Maps and statistics from British and Irish
atlases can be viewed here.
Status summary
Cormorants, historically an almost exclusively coastal-breeding seabird in the UK, have established dozens of inland breeding colonies in eastern and central England since 1980 (Rehfisch et al. 1999). The results from the Seabird 2000 census of Britain and Ireland show a 15% increase in the population between 1985-88 and 1998-2002, with substantial increases coastally in England and Scotland and inland in eastern England (Mitchell et al. 2004). There were 35 inland colonies holding 15% of the total British and Irish population. BBS indicates a shallow increase in Cormorant numbers. The species has recently been moved from the Green to the amber list, for reasons unconnected with its UK trend.
 
BBS UK graph
 
Table of population changes for Cormorant
Source Period
(yrs)		 Years Plots
(n)		 Change
(%)		 Lower
limit		 Upper
limit		 Alert Comment
BBS UK 9 1994-2003 153 14 -4 37   Non-breeders included
BBS England 9 1994-2003 126 27 5 53   Non-breeders included
BBS acknowledgement
 
BBS England graph
 
Productivity information is not currently available for this species
 
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This report should be cited as:
Baillie, S.R., Marchant, J.H., Crick, H.Q.P., Noble, D.G., Balmer, D.E., Beaven, L.P., Coombes, R.H.,
Downie, I.S., Freeman, S.N., Joys, A.C., Leech, D.I., Raven, M.J., Robinson, R.A. and Thewlis, R.M. (2005)
Breeding Birds in the Wider Countryside: their conservation status 2004.
BTO Research Report No. 385. BTO, Thetford. (http://www.bto.org/birdtrends)

Pages maintained by Susan Waghorn and Iain Downie: Last updated 18 January, 2006