New Zealand Farmer Helps Save Rare Penguin from Extinction
By John R. Platt | January 30, 2013
One of the world’s smallest penguins has nearly doubled the size of its population in the past decade and much of the credit is due to the farmer who owns the land where many of the penguins breed.
White-flippered penguins (Eudyptula albosignata), also known as korora, are endemic to the Canterbury region of New Zealand, where the birds have just two major breeding sites, remote Motunau Island and the volcanic headlands of the Banks Peninsula. The latter is where Francis Helps and his wife Shireen have converted much of their farmland into a safe haven for the rare birds.
Helps tells New Zealand’s ONE News that he grew up surrounded by the small blue-white birds, which are known for their loud, football-like victory dances. “As a kid I can remember…all you could hear at night was penguins.”
But even then the penguins were on the decline. Invasive cats, ferrets and stoats (a type of weasel) had overrun the country, endangering many native birds. Like the flightless kiwi, the 30-centimeter korora became easy prey. The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) estimates that up to 80 percent of the penguins throughout the Canterbury area (largest city Christchurch) were killed over a period of 50 years. (Tiny, rocky Motunau Island is predator-free, so the small colony there has maintained its numbers.)
More:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2013/01/30/new-zealand-farmer-save-penguin-extinction/
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