The Magellanic penguins on the coast of Argentina photo: abc.com
I am sure many of you saw March of the Penguins detailing the long, arduous journey of Emperor penguins as they make their way through the ice fields of Antarctica every year in order to breed the next generation of penguins. What you might not know is that 500,000 Magellanic penguins live on a peninsula in the Patagonia region of Argentina-comprising the largest penguin colony in the world. Unfortunately, the number of penguins is experiencing a sharp decline. The older penguins leave the colony and sometimes swim up to 150 kilometers offshore in order to collect fish to bring back and feed to the chicks. This is a major increase in the distance that penguins have gone in the past when they used to travel only 20 or 30 miles offshore. The problem is, the penguins can only leave for a couple of days once the chicks are born and because they are having to swim farther distance and taking a longer time to forage food, the chicks are dying before they receive their nourishment. And why is all of this occurring? According to penguin expert Dee Boersma, because of climate change and global warming which changes the distribution of prey in the ocean and causes the penguins to have to swim farther distances for food. In fact, 12 of the 18 penguin species of the world are now listed as “endangered.” And this is a big indicator of what is going on with the health of our planet and what we as humans are doing to cause these drastic and troubling changes in our world.
Click here to watch Dan Kaufman’s report on this issue for Nightline.
Click here to go to the Penguin Sentinels website where you can learn more about the plight of the Magellanic penguins and Dee Boersma’s mission to help them.
