I’ve lately learned that – according at any rate, to some learned scholars on these matters – no less than ten of the world’s eighteen species of penguin, are endangered to the point that they “face extinction”. No doubt naïvely, I’d had no idea of this: had had the impression that on the whole, penguins live in places so inhospitable that human impact on them was not great. Thoughts prompted by this depressing discovery, informed that from what I had in my head, I could list a mere six penguin species; resorting to Google, showed that as against the abovementioned eighteen, there are a possible twenty-three species – with disagreements and grey areas in the “sub-species” ballpark.
I’d be interested to get views from ornithologically genned-up people; hoping against hope that some might see things as currently more favourable for penguins, than suggested by the sources which I happened upon.
One is inclined to feel that this is a miserable time for lovers of the natural world, to be living in… might be speculated, however, that 400-odd years ago: people like me, here in the Old World, would be wailing and gnashing teeth over the imminent extinction of the aurochs in Poland, and the dodo in Mauritius – and feeling highly apprehensive about what awaited the teeming wildlife of North America once the encroaching settlers from Europe got into their stride…
The African Penguin, found off the southwestern African coast has had its conversation status downgraded to recent years. The population is estimated to be 55 000, down from
200 000 from 2000 and 1.5 million a century ago.
Oil spills and espeically competition from fisheries are believed to be the man cause of the decline. At current rate of decline, it could become extinct within 15 years, despite most (maybe all) breeding sites being in protected areas.
IIRC, commercial fisheries have impactedly negatively on other penguin populations as well.
Sobering to learn of. I now recall seeing mention, years ago, of competition from human fishing, for penguins – to the penguins’ detriment. A thing which seemingly, buried itself deeply in my brain until now.
It sometimes seems that just when one is feeling that in many respects, wildlife is not doing all that badly; there’s the equivalent – as with this penguin-related matter – of having a bucket of ice-cold water dumped over one. Thought prompted, “I’ve been living in cloud-cuckoo-land here, haven’t I?” Appropriate expression maybe; the Old World cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, is in trouble nowadays, with numbers significantly declining.
I don’t know about penguins specifically, but seabirds (such as albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, etc) breeding on remote and near unhabitated islands have been decimated by introduced rodents.
As an example, Gough Island in the South Atlantic (barring other remote islands, nearest country is South Africa, a mere 2400 kilometres away) is a tiny island with just six people there at any one time, manning a weather station. Yet mice are estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of seabirds each year.
Most penguins aren’t Antarctic. If memory serves, only the Emperor is entirely Antarctic; several are Antarctic to sub-antarctic (such as Macaroni, Gentoo, Adelie, King, Chinstrap, Rockhopper), some are more temperate (Magellanic, Humbolt/Peruvian, Jackass/African, Yellow-eyed, Little Blue, Snares), and one lives in Galapagos. Not sure about Royal or Erect-crested.
Ah, yes – the problem of islands; birds; and man’s parasites / friends, accidentally or deliberately introduced – above all, the rat and the cat. (I’ll admit to raised eyebrows initially, at your mention of the Gough Island mouse menace; but I Googled it, and saw that this is indeed so: with a strain of freakishly giant mice involved here.)
There’s been an odd situation of late in the UK, along these lines. The great majority of rats in the British Isles nowadays, are brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), which have mostly displaced the black rat (Rattus rattus) – the predominant rat species centuries ago, still common on the Eurasian continent – but now very rare in Britain. The Shiant Islands – a small group of tiny islands in the stretch of sea between the mainland of Scotland, and the Hebridean island of Lewis / Harris – held until recently, Britain’s largest remaining, self-perpetuating colony of black rats (originating, one is given to understand, from the wrecking of a ship on the islands in the eighteenth century).
The islands are also a major site for breeding seabirds in season – especially, large numbers of the much-loved Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica): that species, and other auks, nowadays in rather alarming decline. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Scottish National Heritage have undertaken a campaign – total success in which announced, earlier this year – to eradicate the islands’ rat population, so as to improve the seabirds’ chances.
There has been some controversy over this issue: not everyone has approved of wiping out a very rare British mammal in what was its greatest stronghold (where it had been present for a couple-plus centuries), for the benefit of bird species which breed at many other sites in Britain. I understand that for a very long time on the islands, a sort of Mexican standoff had obtained between rats; and puffins and other auks. The rats ate many eggs and chicks in the early-summer auk breeding season; but the auks were so numerous, that a goodly number of them survived. In the brief season, the rats feasted and their numbers rose immensely; when, later in the summer, the birds – having raised their young – departed for the open sea, rat numbers plummeted to approximately the previous level. Much though I love birds, I feel torn as regards this particular matter.
Thanks. I’d had the vague notion that non-Antarctic penguins tended to live on remote coasts / islands where human interference was relatively little; reckon that I hadn’t properly thought the business through. Ignorance fought – even if that ignorance was in some ways a happier condition :dubious: .