African Penguin populations have declined by 95%

It is the responsibilty of South Africa's Enviromental Affairs to get involved and prevent our penguins from becoming extinct!Industrialists and conservationists clash over the future of the African penguin at Ngqura- but having a port (and still wanting to build a refinery on top of this!!!) next to a colonie that houses over 48% of African's population is not acceptable!

We cannot sit back and let it happen!!! It is not acceptable to put Oil Spills on the list alongside with overfishing - our penguins will soon become extinct, they have no fighting chance.

 The Port of Ngqura is a newly constructed port protected by the main eastern breakwater (length 2.7 km) and a secondary western breakwater (length 1.125km). The Port of Ngqura is capable of handling container, dry and liquid bulk vessels. The National Ports Authority of South Africa is responsible for developing the deep-water port. Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) has been appointed to handle the terminal operations. 

According to the South African National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds, at the end of the last century the African Penguin population had been reduced to about 10% of the estimated 1.5-million that existed in 1910, and African Penguin populations have declined by 95% since preindustrial times.

But all penguins were at risk, said Prof Underhill, director of the university’s Animal Demographics Unit.

"I don’t think there is a single species (of penguin) that can be said to be doing well, from the Galapagos islands to the Arctic," he said.

Penguins are a family of 17 to 19 species of birds that live primarily in the southern hemisphere, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. They include the tiny Blue Penguins of Australia and New Zealand, also known as Fairy or Little Penguins, and the largest penguins — Antarctica’s Emperor Penguins. The Galapagos Penguin is the only one found north of the equator.

"The sad answer is that we are still not certain what the driving force is that is pushing down African Penguin numbers. There are lots of ideas," Prof Underhill said.

Bird Life South Africa coastal seabird conservation manager Christina Moseley said some of the theories were that guano scraping (the birds make their nests by burrowing into guano mounds) and egg collecting — banned in the 1960s — had eradicated large numbers of the African Penguin. Also, the birds’ prime food — anchovies and sardines — had changed their distribution since the mid-1990s, from the West Coast to the South Coast. Breeding African Penguins can swim only 40km from their nest in a day.

It was estimated 60% of African Penguin numbers counted in the early 1950s had "gone" in the last decade. In total 80% of South Africa and Namibia’s African Penguin populations had vanished since counting began in the 1950s, she said. These penguins occur nowhere else.

Source: Carte Blanche and BDLIVE