Manly’s Disappearing Penguins

Penguin Pose

I wouldn’t have thought that Sydney, Australia would be a natural home for penguins. Sure, they’re found inside Taronga Zoo, but I was surprised yesterday, while on my way to the beach, to find signs near Manly Wharf saying to watch out for penguins.

The colony of fairy penguins (a.k.a. little penguins) used to number in the hundreds. Just a few years ago there were 60 breeding pairs. This month, however, there is just one breeding pair with one chick (and I didn’t manage to see any of them). This colony seems doomed to die out, despite efforts by the government to protect it.

What did them in? Manly, famed for its beach, is heavily developed and the penguins lost a lot of their habitat. Their nesting sites were disturbed, and since breeding is the main reason they came to Manly, that disturbance surely didn’t help the population to grow. But one of the biggest problems was predation by dogs and foxes. The danger was so great that snipers were brought into the town in 2009 to try to protect the little birds.

Elsewhere in its range–which stretches across southern Australia and over to New Zealand–fairy penguins appear to be on the decline, but that decline isn’t fast enough to have scientists worry yet.

I’ll probably have more luck finding wild fairy penguins in someplace like Phillip Island near Melbourne.