South African Chick Bolstering Project Saves the African Penguin!

The African Penguin, listed as “endangered” on the IUCN red list, has come under severe pressure in recent years.

Its population has declined because of habitat loss and increased food shortages – due to large catches of fish by commercial purse-seine fishing operations – in addition to natural environmental fluctuations. Human disturbance of their populations and widespread egg-collecting have also contributed to a downturn in the species’ fortunes.

However, the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) is determined to reverse this decline, through its innovative Chick Bolstering Project. Originally initiated in summer 2006, when large numbers of African penguin chicks were abandoned by their moulting parents, SANCCOB – along with CapeNature and other groups – decided to intervene by rescuing, hand-rearing, and releasing them. Between 2006 and 2008, a total of 1,424 chicks were admitted to SANCCOB for hand rearing, with 1,194 successfully released and rehabilitated.

Since then, the project has gone from strength to strength, with the opening of a new Chick Rearing Unit in Cape Town in 2011 – to “build local expertise in hand-rearing chicks from eggs” – as well as a re-assessment of the project’s objectives in March 2012, to “incorporate the new thinking” and new research around African penguin Conservation.

The current project objectives are:

• assess breeding fidelity to the rearing-and-release site of African penguin chicks (i.e., do the chicks remain in this particular area to breed, or do they move elsewhere?)
• identify the factors that are needed to establish new, sustainable colonies.
• address the loss of African penguins by supplementing wild colonies with locally hand-reared birds.
• increase local capacity to hand rear African penguins for release into the wild at fledgling stage.

Along with its project partners – including the Robben Island Museum and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) – SANCCOB has found that “chicks which have been hand reared and released have shown higher survivorship to breeding age and higher fecundity than other birds. This therefore suggests that increasing the number of fledgling birds using hand-rearing as a tool to aid wild populations could help arrest the decline in overall numbers.”

Working together, SANCCOB and its partners hope to halt the decline in African penguins and eventually replenish their numbers. To find out more, check out the Chick Bolstering Project’s information page, or visit SANCCOB’s research, volunteering, or donation pages to find out how you can help.

Image source: Harvey Barrison / Flickr