Cape TOwn - A new nursery where “toddler” African Penguin chicks can get specialised care while learning the tough lessons of becoming self-sufficient adults has opened at the Rietvlei headquarters of Sanccob at Milnerton, Cape Town.
And in a second initiative aimed at saving as many as possible of this endangered species, this week marked the ground-breaking ceremony for a new “African Penguin and Seabird Sanctuary” in the Overberg, between Gansbaai and Kleinbaai.
An initiative of the Dyer Island Conservation Trust, the sanctuary will be dedicated to the welfare of all distressed seabirds in terms of its founding principle of “Every Bird Counts”.
The important penguin breeding colony of Dyer Island, south-east of Danger Point at the eastern extremity of Walker Bay, is just 8km from the slipway at Kleinbaai.
Globally, there are fewer than 30 000 breeding pairs of African Penguins still in existence – a massive decline from several million.
At its height, the biggest breeding colony on Dassen Island just off Yzerfontein on the West Coast contained up to a million breeding pairs of this feisty seabird species, but two years ago there were just 3 900 pairs, and the island’s penguin population is falling by 20 percent a year. Numbers have also dropped at most of the other breeding colonies of this species that breeds only in South Africa and Namibia.
Francois Louw, spokesperson for Sanccob, explained that the new penguin nursery would supplement their existing chick rearing unit that opened in September three years ago.
“The extra capacity enables us to separate the older penguin chicks from the very young chicks to ensure that their husbandry needs are fully catered for in preparation for their release back into the wild,” he said.
“The nursery has also created the much needed additional space to cater for the ever-increasing requirement for wild abandoned eggs to be hatched and chicks to be reared.”
Abandoned eggs and chicks, or chicks that are ill and weak and that probably won’t survive in the wild, are brought to Sanccob by staff of conservation agencies CapeNature and SA National Parks that both have breeding colonies.
l Anyone wanting to contribute to either initiative can visit www.sanccob.co.za and www.dict.org.za
Cape Argus