The penguins' natural shelter (their own dung) is being removed from the landscape for fertilizer. So, conservationists are supplying penguins with artificial homes in which to nest. (Photo by Frank Olivier)
Along with lions and elephants, Southern Africa is home to a species of penguin. But the African penguin population is dwindling – and scientists are trying to turn things around for the bird. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Transcript
Along with lions and elephants, Southern Africa is home to a species of penguin. But the African penguin population is dwindling – and scientists are trying to turn things around for the bird. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Dyer Island sits just off the coast of the Western Cape of South Africa. It’s tiny, and pretty much consists of two things. Rocks. And birds.
Along with Cape cormorants, Hartlaub’s gulls and swift terns, Dyer Island is the nesting ground for hundreds of African penguins. Although they’re half the size of the Emperor penguins from that movie you might have seen, the species act a lot alike – waddling, awkwardly hopping, and squawking at each other over territory disputes. But today, these African penguins aren’t doing much of anything. That’s not them you hear. They’re mostly just standing still, trying to catch a breeze in the 90-degree heat.
“If you have a look here, you get an idea of just the heat stress of the birds. See this bird over here who’s just sort of standing, gasping, that’s an indication of heat stress.”
Lauren Waller monitors the penguin colony for Cape Nature. That’s the provincial conservation department. Waller says penguins used to find protection from the heat by burrowing into centuries’ worth of bird guano. That allowed them to keep cool, and lay their eggs out of predators’ reach. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, people dug out the guano between the rocks along the Southern Africa coast and sold it as fertilizer.
“And now what you’ve got if you have a look around the island is just – it’s rock, and the penguins can’t burrow into that. And so it now forces them to breed on the surface.”
When penguins make their nests out in the open, kelp gulls can snatch their eggs and chicks. And because penguins breed during African summers, the heat can be overwhelming. Parents often leave the nest just to cool off at sea, and their eggs or chicks die. It will take decades for the guano to build back up.
Scientists are trying to help the penguins out. They’re building nests for them. Waller says Dyer Island is the main testing ground.
“The nests are made out of fiberglass mold and they sort of mimic natural burrows that the bird would make in the ground. They’re kind of like a really small igloo shape, and big enough that you can fit two adult birds inside and their chicks as well.”
The nests are covered with rocks to prevent a greenhouse effect inside the igloos. Waller says they’re experimenting with different materials and nest arrays to see whether the penguins prefer their igloos in a cul-de-sac pattern, or a secluded ocean view. Some nests never catch on, but others have become prime real estate.
“Here you can see we have a colony of 15 nests, and already nine of them are occupied and it’s not their peak breeding yet. So this specific colony is looking really, really good.”
We peek inside one of the plastic igloos where a mother is guarding two fuzzy brown chicks.
“She’s turning her head from side to side.”
“Yeah, it’s a kind of aggressive, stay-away kind of behavior. But if you look behind her you can see the little heads sticking out!”
Waller says as successful as the artificial nests have been, commercial overfishing of sardines and anchovies also affects chick survival. At one well-protected nest a few yards away, she finds an abandoned egg and a dead chick. She says it may be that the parents couldn’t find enough fish.
“It is hard. Knowing their numbers are just going down every year. And you become quite desperate to do something so that these birds don’t have these breeding failures.”
The South African government has banned fishing around one island with penguin colonies to see whether it makes a difference in the birds’ survival rates. Waller says she’s hopeful that now is the turning point for African penguins.
For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.
