SA celebrates World Penguin Day

Monday, April 25, 2016

Pretoria - The Department of Environmental Affairs on Monday joined the rest of the world in celebrating World Penguin Day.

The day was marked against the backdrop of a declining African penguin population in Southern Africa.

Over the past century, the African penguin population has been facing a rapid decline. Records show that the African penguin was South Africa’s most abundant seabird and that the shared population between South Africa and Namibia was well over one million pairs in the 1920s.

Recent records show that some breeding colonies have experienced about 90% decrease in their population sizes. As a result, the current penguin population is just under 20 000.

Modern day challenges that still affect African penguin populations include pollution, habitat degradation, food shortages, climate change, human disturbance, disease, high levels of predations of eggs, chicks and/or adults mainly by gulls, seals and other land-based predators such as mongoose and caracals. 

In certain areas such as Seal Island in False Bay, Geyser Rock next to Dyer Island and Vondeling Island, penguins share their habitat with the Cape fur seal.

This has introduced competition for breeding space leading to management interventions, such as the installation of artificial nests, which have proved to be successful. The nests assist penguins with shade, protecting them from heat stress. The most recent intervention was at Vondeling Island on the west coast where seals have recently recolonised following east ward shifts from the west in prey distribution.

Due to the rapid decline of the African penguin and indications that the current trend will not be reversed despite conservation efforts, in 2010 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reassessed the conservation status of the African penguin, which resulted in the up-listing from ‘vulnerable’ to ‘endangered’.

The up-listing of the conservation status of the African penguin led the Department of Environmental Affairs and a group of experts from various organisations and management authorities to develop the first national Biodiversity Management Plan (BMP) for the African penguin. This plan unified existing efforts by various authorities in an attempt to halt the decline of this species.

The African Penguin BMP was gazetted in October 2013, following stakeholder engagements as well as a public participation process. It is therefore in its third year of implementation. – SAnews.gov.za