Number of nesting seabirds on Lundy island at nine-decade high

Puffins on Lundy in the Bristol Channel. A drive to remove rats from the island has helped numbers. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

There are more seabirds nesting on the island of Lundy than at any time since the 1930s, conservationists have revealed.

The tiny island in the Bristol Channel, a globally famed location for Britain’s seabirds, is now home to 25,000 Manx shearwaters – 95% of England’s breeding population – as well as 1,335 puffins and more than 150 pairs of storm petrels, a species that only arrived on the island in 2014.