Image of the Day

Gentoo Penguins, originally uploaded by Will F Adams.

Tres cool Mr. Adams

Image of the Day

Antarctica Paradise Harbour Gentoo Penguins, originally uploaded by Dave Curtis.

Image of the Day

Gentoo Penguins at Port Lockroy, originally uploaded by mgsbird.

Something new I'm adding... just so we remember our beautiful birds and how much they mean to us.

This week's Pencognito!

Visit the pengies at http://pencognito.com/

Check out a new blog, readers!

From Antarctica. Srsly. 's blog, today he posted tons of new Gentoo pix and a very adorable Chinstrap video. Check him out here and also, I subscribe to his blog. *nods head yes*

http://frozennerd.blogspot.com/2008/09/and-again-penguins.html

Soon... very very soon... the Gentoos will return here. :)

A Press Release from the Center for Biological Diversity

For Immediate Release, Monday, September 8, 2008

Contact: Shaye Wolf, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 436-9682 x 301, cell (415) 385-5746

Penguins Marching Toward Endangered Species Act Protection;
Court Deadline Set For 10 Penguin Species Threatened By Global Warming

SAN FRANCISCO— A federal judge today approved a settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the fate of 10 penguin species imperiled by global warming. Under the settlement, the Service must by December 19th complete its overdue finding on whether the penguins should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The finding is due on the emperor, southern rockhopper, northern rockhopper, Fiordland crested, erect-crested, macaroni, white-flippered, yellow-eyed, African, and Humboldt penguins.
“Right now penguins are marching towards extinction due to the impacts of global warming,” said Shaye Wolf, a seabird biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Protecting penguins under the Endangered Species Act is an essential step toward saving them.”

Abnormally warm ocean temperatures and diminished sea ice have wreaked havoc on the penguins’ foods supply. Less food has led to population declines in penguin species ranging from the southern rockhopper and Humboldt penguins of the islands off South America, and the African penguin in southern Africa, to the emperor penguin in Antarctica. The ocean conditions causing these declines have been linked by scientists to global warming and are projected to intensify in the coming decades.

Krill, an essential food source not just for penguins but also for whales and seals, has declined by as much as 80 percent since the 1970s over large areas of the Southern Ocean. Scientists have linked the ocean conditions causing these declines to global warming and loss of sea ice. The emperor penguin colony at Pointe Geologie, featured in the film “ March of the Penguins,” has declined by more than 50 percent due to global warming.

Many penguin species also are harmed by industrial fisheries, either directly, such as when individual penguins are caught and killed in trawls, nets and longlines; or indirectly through the depletion of essential prey species such as anchovy and krill. Overfishing by industrial fishing fleets plays a prominent role in the hit movie “Happy Feet,” which features two of the petitioned species, the emperor and rockhopper penguins.

Listing under the Endangered Species Act will provide broad protection to these penguins, including a requirement that federal agencies ensure that any action carried out, authorized, or funded by the U.S. government will not “jeopardize the continued existence” of the penguin species. For example, if penguins are listed, future approval of fishing permits for U.S.-flagged vessels operating on the high seas would require analysis and minimization of impacts on the listed penguins. The Act also has an important role to play in reducing greenhouse gas pollution by compelling federal agencies to look at the impact of the emissions generated by their activities on listed species and to adopt solutions to reduce them.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition in November 2006 to list 12 penguin species as threatened or endangered. The filing of the listing petition triggered a three-stage process for the Fish and Wildlife Service, with a strict timeline for each step. The agency is required to first decide within three months whether to conduct a status review of the penguins based on the concerns raised in the petition. The Service initiated status reviews of 10 of 12 penguin species, but it did not do so until July 2007, taking more than twice the time allowed under the law.

In the second stage of the listing process, the Service must decide whether the species should be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. This decision is required within 12 months of receiving the petition. In response to ongoing delays by the Service, the Center filed a lawsuit in February to set a court-ordered timeline for the listing decisions. Today’s court settlement ensures that the Service must make the listing determination by December 19th. A positive decision will then trigger the third stage, during which the agency has another 12 months to finalize the listing of the penguins. Until this process is completed, the penguins do not receive any protection under the Endangered Species Act.

“Penguin populations are in jeopardy and we can’t afford to delay protections,” Wolf said. “It is not too late to save them, but they need the lifeline provided by the Endangered Species Act and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas pollution.”

For more information on penguins and a link to the federal petition, please see:

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/birds/penguins/index.html

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national nonprofit conservation organization with more than 180,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

# # #

________________________________________

Cool shot of a dedicated Gentoo

gentoo penguin, originally uploaded by GliderKing.

Parenting is never easy in Antarctica... as this Gentoo will attest. The egg must stay warm, despite the increase in snowfalls in the area.

Penguins---soon

It seems so long since our little friends have been here, but, the time is much shorter now for their return. We could be seeing Gentoos arrive within a month's time. Isn't that something to look forward to?

This week's Pencognito!

see all penguins at http://pencognito/com

This Week's Pencognito!

Source: http://pencognito.com/

Gentoo video

Soon, the Gentoos will arrive

Ahay from Antarctica~~

I have begun a new blogsite with Blogger and you are all invited to come see it.

For well over a year I've been posting penguin news within the confines of MySpace. But, I realized that my readers had been limited to those folks who had memberships.

Now,on a sister site, I will present all the penguin news, as well as videos, new pix, and of course, Pencognito. So, come on over and take a looksee. The Gentoos will be arriving here before you know it and there will be so much activity to post here that it will be hard to stay current. Come now and subscribe to the posts here


Spring is coming... can't you just feel it?

wiinterrr

This week's Pencognito!

Okay, okay... this strip this week is one of Jen's best and if you like it, why not go say, "hey, that's great" to her at http://pencognito.com

Ready? Set... laugh!

King Penguin knighted by Norway

This is a must-see!



(a special thanks to Sis and Jer for the heads up!)

This week's Pencognito!

Another hilarious Pencognito from Jen at http://pencognito.com

This week's Pencognito!

Please visit Jen and all the pengies at http://pencognito.com

This past week's Pencognito

Sorry that it's a bit late... but it's a must-see. Thanks to Jen at http://pencognito.com

This week's Pencognito!

Please visit Jen and the pengies at http://pencognito.com

Some videos to keep those Gentoos in mind

This Week's Pencognito

Please stop by Jen's and see the pengies at http://pencognito.com/

Another visitor to South Georgia this week

From National Geographic News--Penguin Chicks Freezing

..A gentoo penguin chick (center) is drenched by rain at Port Lockroy on the Antarctic Peninsula in January 2008. Unlike adult penguins, chicks lack water-repellent feathers and so become drenched during rainstorms. The chicks are then susceptible to freezing to death during nighttime's below-freezing temperatures.






Increasing rain in penguin habitats may be caused by global warming, making the precipitation one of many human-caused ills affecting the seabirds, a July 2008 paper says.

Photograph by Fiona Stewart via Jon Bowermaster..

Penguin Chicks Frozen by Global Warming?
John Roach
for National Geographic News
July 2, 2008

This January—deep summer in Antarctica—explorer Jon Bowermaster suffered through a five-day stretch of torrential rains on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The same cannot be said for thousands of downy penguin chicks.
Epic rains are unusual in Antarctica, even in summer, said Bowermaster, who had been in the region on an expedition funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council.

With daytime temperatures above freezing, the rains soaked young Adélie and gentoo penguins not yet equipped with water-repellent feathers (see video below).

At night, when the mercury dipped below freezing, the wet chicks froze.

(Related: "Adelie Penguins Extinct in a Decade in Some Areas?" [December 28, 2007].)

"Many, many, many of them—thousands of them—were dying," Bowermaster said.

The experience, he added, painted a clear and grim picture of the impact of global climate change.

"It's not just melting ice," he said. "It's actually killing these cute little birds that are so popular in the movies."

The freezing of chicks is just one example of how human activity is endangering about two thirds of all penguin species, according to a new paper based on decades of research and observations.

The conservation biologist behind the paper, Dee Boersma of the University of Washington, points out some of the many ways penguins are suffering, such as by ingesting oil from spills, by being run over by tourists, by having their nesting times confused by climate change, and by losing their prey to changing currents.
She and her colleagues have watched that population decline by 22 percent since 1987, with the biggest drop coming in 1991 after a major oil spill. The colony has also lost members to fishing nets, starvation linked to overfishing, and shifting ocean currents that force penguins to swim farther from their nests to feed.

Penguins are going about 60 kilometers [37 miles] farther to find food than they did a decade ago," she writes in the paper, published today in the journal BioScience.


Global Warming

Increasing temperatures are also affecting breeding populations in Antarctica by breaking up ice, changing precipitation patterns, and altering nesting times, Boersma writes.

In 2006 she visited the seasonal sea-ice home of the penguin colony featured in the 2005 movie March of the Penguins. The region was uncharacteristically ice free.

Apparently sensing danger, the penguins had marched the colony several miles farther inland to more protected ice. A windstorm a few weeks later broke up the ice, forcing the birds into the water.

While the adults could survive, the young chicks had yet to fully develop and most likely all died, Boersma notes.

In the Galápagos Islands a penguin population is down to just 2,500 birds from the nearly 10,000 that were there when Boersma first studied the birds in the 1970s.

More frequent El Niño weather patterns—believed to be a consequence of climate change—are pushing penguin prey further out to sea, which is causing the Galápagos seabirds to starve, she noted.

On South African islands, where penguins burrow into mound of seabird droppings to make nests, humans harvesting the guano for fertilizer contributed to a penguin population decline from 1.5 million a century ago to 63,000 breeding pairs today.

Even tourists, Boersma said, can wreak havoc on penguins. At Punta Tombo, Argentina, for example, vehicles ran over five penguins in January 2007.

"The visitors who flock to Punta Tombo are loving the penguins to death," she wrote.

Poster Species?

Boersma would rather see humans' affection for penguins focused into efforts to improve the birds' marine environments.

"If people really know that we're having this kind of effect on penguins, we might change how we do business," she said.

But Boersma isn't just interested in raising awareness.

She advocates the creation of an international institution that regularly monitors penguins to gain insight into changes in the ocean food chain and long-term climate variation. Such an effort would make the seabirds "marine sentinels," she said.

"If we can understand more about them, we presumably could reduce the problems that penguins and other species are having—and maybe save ourselves," she said.

The idea of using penguins as a poster species is not novel, according to David Ainley, an ecologist and penguin expert with ecological consulting firm H.T. Harvey & Associates in San Jose, California.

For example, Ainley noted the California-based Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. government in 2006 to list ten penguin species under the Endangered Species Act.

"Because penguins are so well known, [the center's] agenda was to use them as a kind of handle to increase awareness of climate change," he said.

Ainley said Boersma makes a "nice" case that penguins could serve as useful, attractive environmental monitors. In fact, several Antarctic penguin species are already monitored under the Antarctic Treaty System—a series of agreements among states operating on the continent—he noted.

Bowermaster, the explorer and writer, said any studies that highlight changes in the marine environment, especially those in Antarctica due to global climate change, are valuable.

"If you can use penguins to that end," he said, "I would say great."

We had a few visitors at South Georgia this past week

This Week's Pencognito!

Please visit Jen at http://pencognito.com and say hi to the all the penguins!