They may become as serious a problem as the rats. The Canadian Wildlife Service is developing a plan to eliminate rats from some islands, but it will require luck and innovation to prevent further damage. All but one of the other Cassin's Auklet colonies in British Columbia are already within provincial Ecological Reserves or have been proposed as provincial Wildlife Management Areas. The law protects these types of areas from industrial development and regulates the activities of visiting kayakers and campers. The fact that more and more tourists are visiting wilderness seabird colonies makes it important that the vulnerability of these colonies be well understood by all travellers on the coast.
Disturbance is the worst threat.
Each pair of auklets lays only one egg a year. Disturbance by a curious tourist will cause the adult to abandon the egg completely, out of fear of a more dangerous predator. However, once an egg has hatched, the adult has invested so much time and risked so many attacks by eagles and other predators that it will rarely abandon its young. Tourism also threatens the habitat of colonies. The burrows are fragile and collapse when a person stands on one.