The sad story behind this devastating photograph of a little penguin . This photograph is a shortlisted image in this years Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition.
Little penguins are routinely victims of dog attacks and can become the victims of Victoria’s duck hunting season, which kicks off in March each year.
“A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to see a hunter hidden behind saltbush at the foreshore, and more shocked to be told that it was legal as long as he stayed below the high tide mark.
Others have described the image as ‘confronting’, ‘thought-provoking’, ‘terribly sad’ and ‘powerful’.
Threats to penguins
Around the globe, penguins populations are diving, with certain groups expected to shrink to 20 percent of their current size by the year 2100.
An international team of biologists scoured reports and research going back nearly 250 years, covering all 18 species of penguin (most of which are endangered or threatened), from the little blue penguin to the four-foot-tall emperors. They identified nine ways humans pose problems to penguins in the journal Conservation Biology:
- Penguins killed for their oil, skin and feathers
- Penguins killed as crab or rock lobster bait
- Egg harvesting
- Habitat loss
- Marine pollution
- Bycatch and competition from the fishing industry
- Climate change
- Environmental variability
- Disease and poisoning from toxic algae
“Habitat loss, pollution, and fishing, all factors humans can readily mitigate,” the authors say, “remain the primary threats for penguin species.”
But don’t abandon all hope for these black-and-white birds just yet. The silver lining is that penguins are tough critters: “Many populations of penguins appear to be resilient, and given adequate protection, including sufficient habitat and food, populations can recover from relatively low numbers once threats, such as harvesting and egging, are removed,” the researchers write.
Although there’s no easy fix for climate change in the short term, some of the other human-made problems can be solved by humans. Namely, the biologists call for increased development of marine protected areas, which ease environmental pressure by restricting activities such as fishing. ( source : https://www.thedodo.com/the-9-major-threats-to-penguin )
The case of the Yellow Eyed Penguin
Threats to yellow-eyed penguins / hoiho
Hoiho face a number of threats at sea and on land which impact their survival and ultimately lead to a population decline. They have become casualties of human activities – historically they were hunted for food, fires destroyed vast tracts of habitat and people arrived with predators. Today these predators still roam the countryside and we continue to share the coastal space occupied by penguins, putting their lives at risk.
Terrestrial impacts such as predation and land-use changes, can for the most part be managed. But even on offshore islands without terrestrial impacts, a decrease in the hoiho population is evident. This indicates that marine impacts are a major cause of decline.
Hoiho are considered to be ocean sentinels, helping us to understand the effects of pollution, over-fishing and climate change. They are highly sensitive to variation in the ocean, and sound the alarm on threats to marine ecosystems.
The cumulative impact of a range of different threats means that hoiho is less resilient to any additional impacts. ( Source : https://www.yellow-eyedpenguin.org.nz/penguins/threats/ )
