Protecting the endangered African penguin is an urgent matter requiring immediate action. Just 1% of African penguins remain in the wild—a horrific decline. Experts predict that they may go extinct in the wild as soon as 2035 without intervention.
One of the ways we help fortify the declining African penguin population is through our support of chick-bolstering programs—hand-rearing and releasing rescued African penguin chicks and chicks born from rescued eggs—that have long proven valuable.*
Many people do not know that South Africa has penguins. The African penguin, formerly called the jackass penguin because it sounds like a donkey braying, is like a canary in a coal mine. As marine sentinels, the state of these birds endemic to South Africa and parts of Namibia indicates the health of their ecosystem, just like a dying canary warns miners that a coal mine has become too dangerous.
The release of the hand-reared African penguins is a conservation triumph!
* The 6th IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) Climate Change Assessment Report reports on the impacts climate change has already had on species and ecosystems and highlights African penguins as a key example. According to the report, “Hand-rearing and releasing African penguin chicks, including from eggs, has long proven valuable because molting parents, being shore-bound, are unable to feed late-hatching chicks. (p.103).
Climate change in the form of extreme heat and nest flooding is another cause of the abandonment of African penguin chicks. From 2016 to 2022, the number of eggs rescued increased by 256%, and the number of rescued chicks increased by 63%.