Northern Royal Albatross is the only species of albatross to breed on the New Zealand mainland, with a small colony at Taiaroa Head near Dunedin. Most of the population (99%), however, breed on Chatham Island, a few hundred miles to the east on the other side of the international dateline.
Albatrosses have a bi-annual breeding strategy. It takes about 9 months to rear their single chick, then they take a year off before attempting to breed again. This makes estimating the population difficult since only half of the adult population is present at the breeding colonies in any one year. In the case of the Northern Royal, the annual breeding population is estimated at about 5200 pairs with the total population being estimated to be around 28000-34000 individuals during the 1990's.
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