Young man’s quest to restore puffin population

Levi Heinesen is busy carving wooden puffins in is home village of Viðareiði.

Since he was a little boy, he has been hunting puffins in the cliffs near his village of Viðareiði.

But there isn’t much hunting anymore since the puffin population has been on a steady decline in recent years.

Hoping to persuade puffins to return to the Viðareiði cliffs, he is now planning to plant a colony of decoy puffins in the area.

Levi Heinesen

Caption: 

Levi Heinesen

”This isn’t really my idea. It has been done in other countries such as Canada and the UK, and decoy puffins are also commonly used during hunting in the Faroes.”

“Someone recently placed a few decoys north of my village in an area that has been devoid of puffins for many years. And now we’re seeing a colony of about ten real puffins in the area, which is great.”

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Inspired by this little wonder, Levi now wants to scale up the experiment by placing up to 100 fake puffins on the cliffs.

He is also planning to create some additional nesting burrows, complete with soft bedding and ample space, to ensure that the area is optimally habitable for the returning puffins.

“With a bit of luck, maybe we’ll see more puffins here as early as next year.”

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

English version by prosa.fo.

More Faroese News in English.