A group of African penguins are seen during a rehabilitation session in Cape Town, South Africa on March 22, 2022. African penguins, whose populations have fallen sharply in the last century, may become extinct in the next few decades, experts say. File photo by Murat Ozgur Guvendik/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Out on the shores of the De Hoop Nature Reserve, Christina Hagen has positioned 30 life-like cement African penguin decoys on prominent rocks while loudspeakers broadcast their distinctive calls.
This is to lure passing African penguins to the reserve in the Overberg region, by tricking them into thinking that a colony already exists here.
“These techniques are commonly used in seabird colony restoration and establishment,” said Hagen, the Pamela Isdell fellow of penguin conservation at BirdLife South Africa. “It’s called ‘social attraction’ as it relies on the penguins’ natural tendency to want to be in a colony.”
These tactics mark phase one of a bold attempt, hatched by BirdLife South Africa, CapeNature and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) to re-establish an African penguin colony for the endangered seabirds at De Hoop, an area of high fish abundance.
In the past 30 years, the numbers of Africa’s only penguin species have plummeted by 60% mainly because of a lack of food — dwindling shoals of sardines and anchovies — in their breeding stronghold on the West Coast.
In June last year, phase two of the project kicked off when the team started releasing juvenile African penguins at De Hoop. It was the location of a short-lived penguin colony in 2003, which was abandoned because of predation by caracal. Since 2018, a predator-proof fence has been installed to make the site safe for penguins to breed.
Most of the juveniles are from CapeNature’s Stony Point nature reserve at Betty’s Bay, who were abandoned by their parents as eggs or chicks and subsequently hand-reared by Sanccob, a global leader in seabird rehabilitation.
“Basically, whenever Sanccob had a big enough group — obviously it’s costly to transport the penguins — so when we had at least 20 or 30 penguins, we would bring them to release at De Hoop and in that way we were able to do five releases so far, a total of 148-odd birds. That’s exciting in itself,” said Hagen.
“We need to release young penguins as they still need to choose a breeding colony,” said David Roberts, a clinical veterinarian at Sanccob. “Once a penguin breeds somewhere, they are unlikely to move to a different colony, so the key is to get the young penguins to imprint on the De Hoop site.”
The last three groups of birds that were released were kept in a pen on the beach overnight so they could acclimatise and imprint on the site.
For now, the released birds have left the colony site and are expected to spend the next few years at sea, learning how to fend for themselves and prospecting at different colonies.
“The whole point is they will hopefully return when they are ready to breed,” Hagen said. “That’s still a few years in the future when we might see any of the birds we’ve released returning because it takes them a while to become sexually mature and ready to breed.”
Surprising finds
On 7 June, the team made a surprising, welcome discovery — adult penguins at the colony site.
Hagen said she couldn’t believe her eyes and had to make sure they weren’t decoys. “This is such a positive moment for the project. While we don’t know if the penguins will stay and breed, it is a very encouraging sign.
“These are completely new birds that wouldn’t have been exposed to the site previously and it’s very unlikely that they’re any of the birds that we released last year. So, our conclusion is that they actually have responded to the call playback and the decoy.”
The penguins are being monitored from a distance so as not to disturb them during this sensitive prospecting period. Hagen thinks that upgrading the speaker system, which was damaged by water, may have played a part.
“I got a new speaker that is a bit more powerful so I think the sound is travelling a lot further. That’s the one thing that changed that I know about. Of course, there may be something happening in the sea that we don’t know about; there are perhaps more penguins coming closer to the colony and can see the decoys and hear the calls more easily,” she said.
Hagen is hesitant to declare success. “So far it’s only four penguins and we don’t know if they’re going to stay and breed … We haven’t seen any breeding, any eggs or anything like that. I’m stopping short of saying success just yet until we have evidence of breeding.”
CapeNature’s chief executive, Razeena Omar, encouraged by the presence of adult penguins at the De Hoop Nature Reserve colony site. “While it is still early days, it provides hope that the project will be successful.”
Renewed hope
In the early 1900s, three million African penguins inhabited the islands off the coast of Southern Africa. By 2019, South Africa’s population had dwindled to just 13 600 breeding pairs.
“That’s the lowest population number that they’ve ever been so it’s very worrying,” Hagen said. “Even though it’s still the early days of this project, if it does become successful, it has the potential to contribute to the penguin population, which is very exciting.”
Fish stocks have shifted away from historic feeding grounds off the West Coast and competition with the fishing industry have meant that African penguins are struggling to find food. They have been unable to follow the changed fish distribution because of a lack of safe breeding sites along the Southern Cape coast.
“In theory, we knew that the penguins could establish colonies by themselves — Boulders, Stony Point and Robben Island were all established in the 1980s naturally by the penguins,” Hagen said. “We knew theoretically it was possible but whether a human-assisted attempt could be made, that was kind of a big question mark. This suggests that it could be possible. We’ll have to wait and see if they breed but it is very encouraging.”
Seeing the adult birds at De Hoop has given Hagen “renewed hope” for the project and the species. “That things can happen more quickly than we expect and that if we keep working and keep pushing, things might happen in ways we don’t expect and might turn out better than we expect. There are so many people and organisations working to save the African penguin that all our efforts will add up and make a difference.”
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