African penguins resting and walking on pale sand among granite boulders at Boulders Beach, Simon’s Town, South Africa.
Photo: Krigore, via Wikimedia Commons, licence Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. File page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_penguin_colony_at_Boulders_Beach.jpg
What it is
The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is a small, sociable penguin with tuxedo-like black and white plumage. It lives on the coasts of southern Africa and feeds mainly on sardines and anchovies.
Range
Once, millions of these birds lived along the coasts of South Africa and Namibia. Today the colonies are much smaller. Visitors see them in large groups at places such as Boulders Beach near Simon’s Town and Stony Point, but the main pressures on the birds are at sea, out of sight.
What happened
About 97 percent of the population has been lost. Fewer than 32,000 birds remain in the wild, and the number of breeding pairs fell below 10,000 for the first time. The main cause is a shortage of food: commercial purse-seine fishing competes with the penguins for sardines and anchovies, and climate change is shifting where those fish are found. Young penguins search for food in increasingly unproductive areas, juvenile survival has plummeted, and adults have been reported abandoning their nests. Avian flu has also contributed, but the combined effects of fishing and climate change remain the most critical threats.
Status today
In November 2024 BirdLife International, the global partnership of bird conservation organisations, reported that the International Union for Conservation of Nature had moved the African penguin from Endangered to Critically Endangered. The partnership warns that without urgent action the species could vanish from the wild in fewer than 4,000 days.
Human role
BirdLife South Africa, the South African member of that partnership, and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds have filed a court case against the South African minister responsible for fisheries and the environment. They want the current closures of waters around penguin islands to purse-seine fishing, which they call biologically meaningless, replaced by zones that cover the penguins’ main feeding grounds around six major colonies while keeping the effect on the fishing industry small.
Sources
- BirdLife International DataZone: African Penguin Spheniscus demersus factsheet
- BirdLife International: African Penguin on the Brink of Extinction (20 November 2024)
- BirdLife South Africa: African Penguin newly classified as Critically Endangered as breeding pairs fall below 10,000
- Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds: About us