De Hoop Nature Reserve’s first-ever penguin release took place recently in the hopes of re-establishing a penguin colony in the area.
De Hoop, South Africa (05 July 2021) – BirdLife South Africa, CapeNature and SANCCOB have partnered together in an ambitious project to help save the endangered African penguin. They are hoping to re-establish a penguin colony at the De Hoop Nature Reserve. They recently released 30 penguin fledglings in the reserve.
African Penguins are endangered due to a lack of food in the oceans and safe breeding grounds. They leave areas with insufficient food to supply their needs, or their chicks are at risk.
“The African penguin population is decreasing rapidly, primarily due to a lack of food. A shift in fish stocks away from historic feeding grounds on the west coast, as well as competition with the fishing industry have meant that African penguins breeding on the west coast of South Africa especially, are struggling to find food.
Penguins have been unable to follow the changed prey distribution because of a lack of safe breeding sites along the southern Cape coast. A small colony of penguins established at the De Hoop Nature Reserve in 2003 but predation by caracal caused them to abandon the colony a few years later.” – SANCCOB
BirdLife South Africa started investigating the area in 2015 to assess if it would be possible to re-establish a penguin colony at the reserve. The site is perfect, but there is still a risk of predators. In partnership with CapeNature, BirdLife South Africa designed and constructed a predator-proof fence to ensure that the penguins would be safe this time.
To entice penguins to re-colonise the area naturally, life-like penguin decoys and penguin calls being broadcast by loudspeakers help create the impression that penguins are breeding there. We have previously written about the penguin decoys, which you can read about here.
Now that testing the site has completed, BirdLife approached SANCCOB to ask if they could release penguins into the area. SANCCOB loved the idea of a new, safe wild space for their penguins, and the official release was done on the 11th of June, 2021.
“This release, which will hopefully be the first of many, is the culmination of many years of work so I’m immensely excited to see it finally happening!” says Christina Hagen, the Pamela Isdell Fellow of Penguin Conservation at BirdLife South Africa, who has been running the project since 2015. “Although there are more years of hard work ahead of us, it is an important step to take now, as every year we wait, we lose more and more penguins.” continues Hagen.
CapeNature CEO, Dr Razeena Omar confirms the value of this partnership, saying “CapeNature is proud to be part of this innovative project on one of our flagship protected areas, De Hoop Nature Reserve. It is critical that we reverse the decline of the endangered African Penguin, and the release of the rehabilitated fledglings is an important next step in achieving the goal of establishing a colony.”
Most of the penguins were rescued as eggs, incubated, hatched and raised at SANCCOB’s Table View branch.
Dr David Roberts, Clinical Veterinarian at SANCCOB, says, “We received an unusually large number of African penguin eggs earlier this year and it was a tall task to hand-rear so many chicks at once. Events like this one indicate the trouble that African penguins are in when extreme weather conditions and lack of food cause adult birds to abandon their nests to save themselves”.
According to Roberts, “The penguins are released as fledglings as they have not yet chosen a place to breed and once an African penguin starts breeding at a colony, they return there year after year. By releasing fledglings, we hope that they will return to De Hoop Nature Reserve to breed when they are ready to do so in three to six years.”
Some of the fledgelings have been marked with Passive Integrated Transponders for post-release monitoring; two African penguins have been fitted with GPS trackers to monitor their movements immediately after release.
“We are grateful to our partners, CapeNature and SANCCOB, and all the donors who have made this work possible, particularly Pamela Isdell, the Patron of the African Penguin” says Mark D. Anderson, CEO of BirdLife South Africa. “This is a vital step towards re-establishing this colony and will improve the conservation status of our iconic penguin.”
This is the first of many releases to come. We hope the re-establishing of the colony is a success!
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