Disoriented Penguin Reaches Peru's Shore

LIMA, Peru - A "disoriented" Magellanic penguin swam ashore on Peru's coast, some 3,100 miles north of his home in the frigid waters of southern Chile.
The penguin got lost while looking for food, Peru's National Resource Institute was quoted as saying in El Comercio newspaper Saturday.
"It seems he was disoriented and got lost in the sea due to the different ocean currents," said Wilder Canales, who heads the National Paracas Reserve in southern Peru. "In his endless search for food, he casually climbed up on our shores, something that has never happened before."
Television images showed scientists at the nature reserve treating an injury to the penguin's right wing that was apparently caused by a fishing net.
Peruvian authorities are trying to coordinate with their Chilean counterparts to return the penguin to its home waters.

Penguins March Into New Park

 The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society announced today that the government of Argentina will create a new marine park along its isolated and windswept Patagonia coast to safeguard more than half a million penguins and other rare seabirds. Located in Golfo San Jorge, the new protected area covers around 250 square miles (647 square kilometers) of coastal waters and nearby islands strung along almost 100 miles (160 kilometers) of shoreline.
 
 The announcement was made by President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, the Governor of the Province of Chubut—Mario Das Neves—and by Argentina’s National Park Service. The park’s creation represents a joint effort by the Government of Chubut, the National Parks Service of Argentina, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Fundación Patagonia Natural.

“This decision represents a significant commitment by the government to protect one of the most productive and extraordinary marine ecosystems on the planet,” said Dr. Guillermo Harris, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Argentina Program. “The creation of this park comes in the nick of time for many species that are threatened by the region’s fisheries and energy industry.”

The new park serves as a nesting and feeding ground for some quarter million pairs of Magellanic penguin, estimated to represent 20 percent of the entire species. The park includes more than 40 small islands, which support the only two nesting colonies of southern giant petrels on the entire Patagonian coast, as well as the only colonies of Southern American fur seals. Other denizens of this coastal oasis include the endangered Olrog’s gull, the white-headed steamer duck, and almost a quarter of all imperial and rock cormorants of Argentina.
 While the coastline is largely undeveloped, its wildlife is under pressure from a number of threats, including Argentina’s commercial shrimp industry. Many birds become entangled in fishing nets, and oil pollution from tankers transporting petroleum from southern Patagonia to Buenos Aires and from expanding offshore oil drilling operations is a looming possibility.

Legislation to formally create the protected area will be drafted in the next few months and approved by the Argentine Congress and local legislators.

Penguins OK With Human Visitors -- Maybe

 Scientists report human contact has no immediate negative effects on Magellanic Penguins, but seeing humans for the first time is stressful on them.
Researchers from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., monitored the defensive head turns and the level of a hormone penguins secrete in response to stress.
"Head turns of penguins visited for 10 days were significantly lower (in number) than those of penguins visited for 5 days and were not significantly different than for penguins living in the (much frequented) tourist area," lead author, biology Professor Brian Walker, wrote.
The researchers said long-term consequences are much harder to document, especially in long-lived animals such as Magellanic Penguins.
"Our data show quantifying the consequences of human disturbances on wildlife is rarely simple and straightforward," they said.
Magellanic Penguins nest in coastal colonies along the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans of South America. The penguins in the study live in the largest and most visited colony of Magellanic Penguins at Punta Tombo, Argentina. More than 70,000 people visit annually.

The research appears in the journal Conservation Biology.