Green Options

Magellenic penguins living on the Punta Tombo peninsula, 110 kilometres south of Argentina, are having to swim up to 50 miles further to find food than they did ten years ago.

According to research based upon sea ice models from the IPCC report, Antarctica’s iconic Emperor Penguins could face extinction by the end of the century due to habitat loss.

By comparing observations spanning 43 years of population dynamics against models which project the declining levels of Antarctic sea ice, the study predicts that the giant penguins will be too slow to adapt to changes wrought by global warming.

The startling prediction is being called a conservative estimate by researchers, who claim that the data has as much as a four-in-five chance of being accurate. This number is particularly high because individual Emperor Penguins are long-lived and, as a result, biologically slow learners. Thus, they are unlikely to shift their breeding patterns fast enough to match the rapidly changing climate.

Conservationists have brought in two Maremmas sheepdogs to watch over a small colony of fairy penguins on Australia’s Middle Island. The effort has been so successful that Middle Island is recommending sheepdogs be used to protect other endangered species across the globe.

“We are now starting to see some great results,” said Middle Island Maremma Project manager Ian Fitzgibbons. “We have had our best penguin count since we began in 2006 with over 80 birds counted in one night and I think we have about 26 chicks on the island too.”

The traditional breeding ground for African penguins has turned to a rocky moonscape, leaving the rapidly vanishing species confused when it comes time to lay their eggs. Humans caused the problem and now some people are trying to fix it.

Like they have for centuries, the penguins will return to Dyer Island off the southern tip of Africa to breed this year. When humans noticed the patter, they began to shovel and transport the penguin-poo-filled topsoil to the mainland to use as fertilizer, eventually scraping the island bare.

Wilfred Chivell of the Dyer Island Conservation Trust has spent his time the last couple months trying to reverse this problem in a rather unconventional way: he installed 800 fiberglass igloos on the island for the penguins to nest inside. Apparently so far they’re a huge hit and the penguins like to “decorate” the igloos with rocks and foliage before moving in.

What better use for your sewing skills than helping rescue baby puffins?

[Creative Commons photo by Seth M]

Each year on the Scottish isle of St Kilda, dozens of pufflings are stranded inland after the lights from the island disorient them. Rangers with the National Trust of Scotland rescue the babies by putting them into cotton drawstring bags to keep them safe before releasing them back into the sea.

Hundreds of penguins have been jet-lifted to their native home in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, after washing up lost and tired on the beaches of Northern Brazil.

At least 1,000 penguins this year to date, have washed up on Brazilian beaches.  Though it is normal for penguins to travel North from their South Atlantic home in search of food, it is rare that they swim all the way to northern states of Brazil, and authorities are amazed that the penguins just keep coming.

Some experts have offered that because the migration of penguins is closely related to their food supply, this unusual journey suggests that something has gone awry with their normal fish stocks.

When you think of locations for penguins, Antarctica is probably your first guess. If you know a bit more about penguins, you might point to Patagonia or even down my way, where the Fairy Penguins live at Phillip Island. However I would very much hope that you wouldn’t predict that they could be making their way as far north as Bahia, one of the 26 states of Brazil.

According to Brazilian wildlife authorities on Wednesday, penguins have been “washing up” in far greater numbers this year in areas like Rio de Janeiro, where they are common, but not normally in these numbers.

“This is unheard of. There have even been reports of penguins washing up as far as Aracaju,” said Adelson Cerqueira Silva of the federal environmental agency.