Threats to African Penguins & Penguin Conservation

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Toko
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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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http://www.gov.za/speeches/environmenta ... -2015-0000

Environmental Affairs on decline of African penguins in South Africa

15 Jul 2015
The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has noted the recent media reports regarding the decline in population numbers of the African Penguin, due to lack of food.

In 2010, the DEA, CapeNature (CN), together with South African National Parks (SANParks) and other interested parties, initiated the development of a “Biodiversity Management Plan for the African Penguin Spheniscus demersus” (BMP-AP) in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act of 2004.

This plan was finalised and published in the Government Gazette in 2013. The plan aims to address the decline of the African Penguin population in South Africa and to halt the decrease. DEA is responsible for the plan and appointed a steering committee to oversee its implementation in 2014.

Furthermore, the implementation of the African Penguin BMP is supported by three Working Groups comprising of management authorities, academia, research institutions, NGO’s such as BirdLife, and rehabilitation centres, captive institutions and the National Zoological Gardens to mention a few. Monitoring of African penguins is undertaken by management authorities including DEA, CN and SANParks.

The decreases in numbers have been particularly severe in the north region of Cape Town, where numbers decreased by 90% in the eleven-year period 2004–2015, with a loss of 30 000 pairs. Heavy losses were recorded at Dassen and Robben islands where adult survival rates decreased substantially.

These decreases were influenced by displacements to the Southeast of the main prey of African penguins (sardine and anchovy), which brought about a mismatch in the distributions of prey and the northwest breeding localities, and by a large decrease in sardine biomass. The impact of an altered distribution of prey may have been exacerbated by fishing in the vicinity of the Western penguin colonies.

As such in South Africa, numbers of African penguins collapsed in the early 21st century. In 2001, an estimated 56 000 pairs bred, which were subsequently reduced to 19 000 pairs (65%) in 2012.

Furthermore, the African penguin is now classified as Endangered in terms of the criteria of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Numbers of African penguins in the Eastern Cape have been stable since 2003, whereas numbers between Cape Point and Cape Agulhas have increased slightly in recent years.

The African penguin is endemic to Southern Africa (breeding only in South Africa and Namibia) and it is Africa’s only extant penguin (excluding the four species that breed at South Africa’s Prince Edward Islands in the South-West Indian Ocean).

The department would like to stress that BMP-AP considers all threats to penguins including food availability and has several objectives that are being implemented in collaboration with relevant agencies.

Amongst these are securing the protected status of all extant African penguin colonies, including those not currently formally protected, considering establishment of new breeding sites closer to the present availability of food, and ensuring an adequate abundance of prey for penguins at existing colonies.

In conclusion the apparent stabilisation of the population over the last four years is encouraging, but should not be interpreted as an indication that the long term decline has definitely ended. The Department is grateful to the various organisations and individuals that are assisting with implementation of the management plan.

Enquiries:
Zolile Nqayi
Cell: 082 898 6483

Issued by: Department of Environmental Affairs


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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Mysterious road to extinction of Boulders Beach’s famous African Penguins


No tourist’s visit to the Cape Peninsula is complete without a visit to Boulders in False Bay.1 This is the home of hundreds of tame, photogenic African Penguins, ever ready to be added to their holiday pics. But there is a dark side to these cute aquatic birds. The species is dying out at such a rapid rate that future tourists visiting Boulders may see little more than rocks. In the past decade breeding numbers of African Penguins have dropped 90%. And scientists don’t know why. – Alec Hogg

African_Penguins
With their numbers down 90% in the past decade, the star attractions at Cape Town’s Boulders Beach may not be around for much longer.
By Lawrence Bartlett

In the cold, clear waters at Boulders Beach in Cape Town, the African penguins are so relaxed they swim among humans and waddle past sunbathers on the sands.

But their unique species is dying, and scientists are trying to solve the mystery of whether it is humans that are killing them, and if so, how.

As representatives from over 150 countries huddle at a Paris conference aimed at achieving a global agreement on fighting climate change, the scientific sleuthing off Africa’s southwestern coast highlights the difficulties in pinning down the links between global warming and animal behaviour.

African penguins are found only in South Africa and neighbouring Namibia, where they feed on fish shoals in the nutrient-rich waters of the cold Benguela current that runs northward along the west coast.

The number of breeding pairs has dropped by 90 percent at South African colonies north of Cape Town, from about 32,000 in 2004 to just over 3,000 in 2014, according to official statistics.

There is little dispute that the reason for the sharp decline in the number of little jackass penguins — so nicknamed for their braying calls — is the strange behaviour of their main prey, sardines and anchovies.

The concentrations of fish have moved southwards and eastwards, leaving the penguins dying of hunger in their wake.

Because of the African Penguin, the Boulders is a popular tourist spot
Because of the African Penguin, Boulders Beach is one of Cape Town’s most popular tourist spots
A search for answers

Scientists say an obvious culprit might appear to be overfishing, but there is some dispute about whether this is borne out by the results of periodic fishing bans around some of the penguins’ major habitats.

“The fish have seemingly changed their distribution, but what caused that is still a big research question,” said Rob Crawford, a scientist with South Africa’s department of environmental affairs.

“Overfishing and climate change are the main two possibilities and it is very hard to disentangle them,” he told AFP.

There is no question that humans were responsible for an initial steep decline in the number of African penguins, which are classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

The environmental affairs department says the overall South African population may have been around a million breeding pairs in the 1920s — dropping to just 19,000 in 2012.

The exploitation of eggs for human consumption played a major role in the early disastrous decline, but egg collection was banned in 1967 and numbers have continued to plummet.

The population in Namibia has also fallen sharply, from 12,162 breeding pairs in 1978 to an estimated 4,563 pairs in 2008, according to Birdlife International.

“There is no clear cut answer that climate change (over long-term environmental variation) is a driver, but it is thought to be playing an important role,” says Richard Sherley, a University of Exeter researcher and expert on the African penguin.

“Changes in sea surface temperatures in the 1990s and early 2000s have resulted in (amongst other things) a change in the area most suitable for spawning for anchovy and sardine,” he told AFP in an email interview.

“As a result, the high-energy prey that the adults of these fish species represent for penguins is far from the penguin colonies on South Africa’s West Coast for much of the year.”

African penguinTime to move?

A plan to establish a new colony for penguins on the south coast, closer to their shifting food source, is among proposals aimed at saving the species.

Before penguins are moved to the chosen site, it will be prepared to make it seem like an established colony, says Birdlife South Africa.

Decoys, sound recordings and mirrors will be used to give the illusion of penguins using the colony, and penguin chicks and young will be released there.

One of the colonies hardest hit is on Cape Town‘s Robben Island, where late liberation icon Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists were imprisoned.

Thousands of kilometres to the south, in Antarctica, the charismatic Emperor penguins — the inspiration for the Oscar-winning animated film “Happy Feet” — are also threatened by rising temperatures, international researchers have warned.

In Paris, delegates to the climate change conference, which runs until December 11, are haggling over an ambitious roadmap for achieving the UN goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

The UN‘s climate science panel says the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal has to drop 40-70 percent between 2010 and 2050, and to zero by 2100.

As the wrangling continues, the African penguins may be a living warning of the cost of failure.


https://www.biznews.com/africa/2015/12/ ... -penguins/


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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Very sad. :-(


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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:no: :no: :no:


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Toko
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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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http://www.birdlife.org.za/conservation ... nservation


African Penguin conservation
Current state of affairs


By global standards, a population is considered unhealthy and in danger if it decreases to 10% of the former (pre-exploitation/decrease) levels. The African Penguin population is currently at about 14% its 1950s level, when the first official census was conducted and is still on a strong downward population trajectory.

About 100 years ago the colony at Dassen Island alone, already subject to huge egg harvesting pressures and other disturbance, stood at ~1 million pairs. In 2011, around 4 000 pairs bred there. That amounts to a loss of over 10 000 pairs per year! Globally there are fewer than 25 000 pairs – essentially the loose change from the estimates of a century ago. In 2014 the South African population was about 19 000 pairs, while Namibia has only about 5 000 pairs. This means that the current global population is just 3% of the estimate from the Dassen Island colony in the 1920s!

In 2010, the African Penguin was 'uplisted' from Vulnerable to Endangered by BirdLife International. It is on a strong, downward population trajectory.

pdf African Penguin Fact Sheet (408 KB) http://www.birdlife.org.za/documents/se ... actsheet-1

What's driving this?

The collapse is largely driven by human activities. First egg-collecting and guano scraping caused enormous losses. Then overfishing in the 1960s continued to cause decreases. Now some populations are so small they’re vulnerable to relatively minor events, such as seals preying on adults, gulls taking eggs, or extreme weather causing breeding failure.

A population decreases when mortality exceeds recruitment. Attempts to increase recruitment of African Penguins have included maintenance and improvement of nesting habitat, and captive rearing and release of orphaned wild chicks. Attempts to decrease mortality include eradicating invasive predators, reducing predation by natural predators (e.g. seals) around colonies, rehabilitation and release of oiled and injured penguins, and disease control.

By far the biggest concern is, quite simply, a lack of food. Penguins eat mainly sardines and anchovies, which are also the target of the commercial purse-seine fishing industry. However, the role fishing has played in the decrease is hotly debated. In the mid-1990s the distribution of the sardines and anchovies shifted from the west coast of South Africa to the south coast believed to be due to climate change and high fishing pressure on the west coast. While this shift has almost certainly contributed to the population decrease, the colonies on the south coast, which supposedly should have benefited from the shift, have continued to decrease in numbers.


Why are penguins important?

Protecting species of no tradeable commercial value may seem a luxury. But the African Penguins are our marine sentinel, our ‘canary in the coal mine’ for ecosystem health. They play the role of an early warning signal for environmental threats. The African Penguin eats almost nothing but small pelagic fish (sardine and anchovy), so when penguin numbers are in a steep decline, it means that there are not enough small pelagic fish to go around. Such changes impact negatively on the entire ecosystem, not just the penguins, because everything else in the ecosystem relies, either directly or indirectly, on the small pelagic fish. Effectively managing our ecosystems is vital for our rich marine biodiversity, from the hake and yellowtail fish that eat the small pelagics, to the sharks and tuna that eat those fish, to penguins, seals, dolphins, and whales – all of which are dependent on there being sufficient little fish at the base of the chain. It is also critical to the job creation and business opportunities created through the commercial fisheries that sustain local communities and drive our economy.

The decline of African Penguins tells us that the marine ecosystem is undergoing massive change, and those changes may well result in a system that produces less food in the future, or one that cannot support penguins, gannets, seals and dolphins. We get a significant proportion of our daily protein from the sea – either directly through eating fish, or indirectly through eating things that have been fed fishmeal, or that are fertilized with marine products. Jobs and food security are an enormous concern for everyone. Our national economy would shrink by approximately 6% if we lost all our fisheries.

What are we doing about this?

Significant funding has been received from the African Penguin Species Champion, the Charl van der Merwe Trust, and Pamela Isdell, a patron of the African Penguin to ensure that critical interventions can be made. The projects we are involved with work towards our major goal: incorporating the needs of penguins (and other predators) into fishery management. This is known as the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF).

We are working on the following projects:

Policy level: Fishing quotas are set without taking the distribution of fish into account and this may affect the availability of fish for penguins. We are working with government and fisheries to change the way the fishing quotas are given, so that they take into account the fact that the distribution of fish is not uniform around the coast.

Island closures project: As part of a broader initiative, BirdLife South Africa funded researcher, Dr. Lorien Pichegru to examine the effects of banning fishing around penguin breeding islands. Preliminary results show that creating a 20 km fishing exclusion zone around a colony means that during the energetically demanding breeding season penguins don't have to swim as far as to find food.

Satellite tracking: Penguins need to “fatten up” before moulting in order to survive two weeks of moult when they replace all their feathers and cannot forage for food. Penguins also face a crucial period after moulting as the hungry and thin penguins must find enough food to replace the energy reserves lost during moult. Very little, however, is known about where penguins go during these pre- and post-moult periods and what threats they may be facing at sea. Satellite trackers and GPS loggers are attached to penguins during these periods to learn more about their non-breeding foraging ecology. Read more

Establishment of a new colony: African Penguins breed mainly on islands where they are safe from terrestrial, mammalian predators. Mainland colonies such as Boulders Beach and Stony Point survive because the towns around them create barriers, restricting predators' access to the colonies. Between Gansbaai and Port Elizabeth there lies 600 kms of coast where there are no islands, and therefore no breeding penguins, effectively splitting the population in two. BirdLife South Africa has received funding from African Penguin patron Pamela Isdell and is investigating options for creating a new penguin colony on the south coast mainland, which will be protected from predators. This colony will represent an 'insurance policy' for the penguin population. If another large oil spill occurs on the west coast or climate change causes the fish distribution to shift again, we could lose large numbers of penguins in these two widely distant population centres. BirdLife South Africa is driving the process of investigating potential sites and methods to use in establishing a new colony.

Transponder project: As part of a broader initiative, BirdLife is providing support for a project aimed at micro-chipping penguins to gather data on penguin population survival and movement patterns.

For more information on the new colony, please contact Christina Hagen. For information on the other African Penguin projects, please contact Dr Taryn Morris.


Acknowledgements

None of our African Penguin Conservation work would be possible without the contributions from many people and organisations. Taryn Morris’s position as the Coastal Seabird Conservation Manager and Adri Meyer’s internship are funded by the Charl van der Merwe Trust (which also funds our work with the fishing industry and the tracking project). Christina Hagen’s position as the Pamela Isdell Fellow of Penguin Conservation and the new colony work are funded by Pamela Isdell. The Diemersfontein Wine Estate also supports our penguin conservation work through the sale of For the Birds! red and white wines.


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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Thank you for posting this, Toko!

We ended our Eastern Cape trip last year with a private trip out to St. Croix Island to see the penguin colony there. We were taken out by Lloyd Edwards, the owner of Raggy Charters in Port Elizabeth, whose wife happens to be the Dr Lorien Pichegru mentioned in the article.

We got to hear all about the issues mentioned above and then some, as we also spent a couple of nights at the Edwards-Pichegru home (Raggy Charters also offers lodging!).

They are interesting people doing great work and I highly recommend a boat trip out to the islands to anyone passing through or staying in Port Elizabeth (or Addo).

http://www.raggycharters.co.za/page/wha ... uth_africa

Kind regards,

Adam

P.S. Here are a few photos from our trip on December 7, 2015:

Image

Image

Image


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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The penguins suffer the same fate as many other species O/ Quite simply the significant change of their environment O/

And what does one do with penguin eggs? 0-

(I'm sure there is some sick explanation to it like there is with rhino horns, but I never heard about penguin eggs being
useful for something with humans...)


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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Too much fishing along the coast for decades does not help either 0*\


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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Now it's all about the availability of food.

If you visit the SAMREC penguin rehab centre in Port Elizabeth, you will see that a great many of their "patients" come in malnourished and have to be force-fed.

They can try to establish all the new colonies they want, but if there is not enough food, what are the chances of success?


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Re: Rapid fall in African penguin population

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Mel wrote:And what does one do with penguin eggs? 0-

(I'm sure there is some sick explanation to it like there is with rhino horns, but I never heard about penguin eggs being
useful for something with humans...)

People eat the eggs Mel . It was part of Cape cuisine and considered a delicacy , and even available commercially in Cape Town as recently as 1965-1970 0*\ Regularly appeared on restaurant menu's :O^


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