Endangered Penguins of South Africa - 360 | National Geographic

We now have approximately 2% of the historical natural population of African penguins. That's the population that was recorded in the late 1800s. There have been several threats to penguins: egg collection, people collecting them, and more recently, the major threats have been habitat encroachment and the major depletion of fish in the sea.

So, a lack of new homes is a problem. We do have a major problem with there not being an efficiency, and that affects the whole life cycle of the penguins. They don't find enough fish, and then they can't breed. Our major concern is still overfishing and depleted fish stocks. It's the sardines and anchovies that the penguins naturally eat, which are also heavily fished by people.

I'm the finical bit; my job entails looking after the health and welfare of the birds. I evaluate them, and we make diagnosis and treatment plans. Then I would see their progress until they're released again. Sometimes we find some tiny birds, and they just need to be fed or treated superficially and are healthy enough, so I can go back into the wild.

Sometimes that can be here for almost up to a year. If they aren't waterproof enough, then we can't release them into the wild because they need to be waterproof 80% of the time. If they're not waterproof, they can get very cold and get hypothermia, which can be fatal. Most of our penguins that come in are chicks that have been abandoned by their parents due to molting.

To help bolster the natural penguin population, we take those in. However, the ones that I have to deal with usually have wounds or low body weight. The wounds can be caused by predators, pollution, or boats. The great thing about penguins is they're just really tough, so they can overcome broken bones and huge wounds and bites by sharks. They can very successfully heal and grow and be able to be released, which threatens the world where they'll still live a proper life.