Short-tailed albatross

Short-tailed albatross
Conservation status
Vulnerable  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
CITES Appendix II (CITES)[2]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Procellariiformes
Family:	Diomedeidae
Genus:	Phoebastria
Species:	P. albatrus
Binomial name
Phoebastria albatrus (Pallas, 1769)[3]
Synonyms
Diomedea albatrus[4]

The short-tailed albatross or Steller's albatross (Phoebastria albatrus) is a large rare seabird from the North Pacific. Although related to the other North Pacific albatrosses, it also exhibits behavioural and morphological links to the albatrosses of the Southern Ocean. It was described by the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas from skins collected by Georg Wilhelm Steller (after whom its other common name is derived). Once common, it was brought to the edge of extinction by the trade in feathers, but with protection efforts underway since the 1950s, the species is in the process of recovering with an increasing population trend.^[5] It is divided into two distinct subpopulations, one of which breeds on Tori-shima in the Izu islands south of Japan, and the other primarily on the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.