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Climate change impacts penguin population

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Climate change impacts penguin population

The loss of penguin populations “sometimes is not due to a single cause, but rather a combination” of them, explained the president of the Global Penguin Society, Pablo Borboroglu in an interview.

DIARIO DEL HUILA, ENVIRONMENT

Penguin populations are increasingly reduced by the impact of climate change, overfishing, pollution and predators, among other factors, and ten of its eighteen species are listed as “endangered” on the Red List of Species of the IUCN, especially concerned about the Galapagos, African and yellow-eyed penguins.

The loss of penguin populations “sometimes is not due to a single cause, but rather a combination” of them, explained the president of the Global Penguin Society, Pablo Borboroglu in an interview, on the occasion of Penguin Awareness Day, which was celebrated on January 20, which joins the celebration of World Penguin Day on April 25.

Borboroglu, who works with various habitat protection projects and education programs in Patagonia, southern Chile, New Zealand and the United States, has highlighted the loss of populations in the last hundred years, and those that “generate of greatest concern” are the African penguin, the Galapagos penguin and the yellow-eyed penguin.

species decline

Specifically, in this period, the African (Spheniscus demersus) has suffered a “resounding drop”, going from a million pairs to 10,000 due to commercial fisheries, especially in South Africa, according to the researcher.

The Galapagos (Spheniscus mendiculus), on the other hand, although “it has never had a very abundant population”, is affected by climatic phenomena in its reproduction and feeding; while the yellow-eyed (Megadyptes antipodes), with only 1,500 pairs, is threatened by species introduced into its habitat in New Zealand.

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For his part, the researcher from the department of evolutionary ecology of the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC), Andrés Barbosa, who has been researching the species for the last 20 years in Antarctica, has warned of the decline in the penguin population. in this geographical area, such as the chinstrap (Pygoscelis antarcticus), with 60% less population, or the Adelie (Pygoscelis adeliae) with a 68% decrease.

These “alarm signals” of population decline are exacerbated by “increased competition for food or longer journeys to obtain it” due to heat waves from climate change.

Impact of climate change

“The penguin reflects environmental changes very well,” Borboroglu highlighted in this context, however, global warming “affects some species more than others.”

The “pattern of ice formation or yield” changes in Antarctics, influencing their habitat and reproduction; the rest -14 of the 18 species-, which live in temperate climates, are harmed not only by the temperature, which can be deadly, but also by the lack of availability of these foods.

penguin protection

These flightless seabirds associated with cold ocean currents, reside in areas of the southern hemisphere such as Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica and provide “information on the state of health of that ecosystem” thus ensuring, “our future health” and that of other species, adds Barbosa.

For this reason, entities such as the Global Penguin Society, the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) and WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), among others, carry out work, research and conservation and awareness projects on these species, monitoring their ecosystems, analyzing their threats and proposing solutions.

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