Africa's Two Largest Penguin Colonies See Populations Plunge 60% Since 2001 - NYT

[hatrack]

A century ago, at least 1.5 million African penguins waddled and swam the coasts of Namibia and South Africa. Today they are largely confined to a sprinkling of islands off South Africa’s tip, including Robben Island, well known as the site of Nelson Mandela’s long imprisonment. Experts say there are 120,000 of these penguins at most.

That number, like Spheniscus itself, is plunging. Since 2001, the number of adult penguins in the two largest colonies — the other is on Dassen Island, about 40 miles north — has plummeted by almost 60 percent, to fewer than 18,000 combined. “At the moment, the penguins are in real trouble,” said Mr. Underhill, a statistics expert at the University of Cape Town and vice president of the International Ornithological Committee. “There have been population movements like this in the past. But this one seems particularly extreme.”

Were Spheniscus a seagoing crow or, say, a chicken, fewer people might care. But the African penguin, the continent’s only native penguin, is adorable — not two feet tall at adulthood, with large eyes set in a field of red and a distinctive black stripe circumnavigating its belly. Its calls range from a delicate trill to a loud nighttime bray, which leads some to call it the “jackass penguin.”

Though the blue crane is South Africa’s national bird, the penguin clearly captures more hearts. Most penguins live on islands, shielded from land predators. But one colony on the Cape of Good Hope peninsula annually lures tens of thousands of gawkers, who revel in walking among throngs of the tolerant creatures.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/africa/04robben.html

[phantom power]

1. Yeah, but we'll still get to see CG animated movies about them.

So it's all good.