King Penguin Faces Extinction Due to Climate Change
The prospect that the King penguin will go extinct as a result of climate warming is rising inexorably, scientists say today.
Second only to Emperor penguins in size, King Penguins - distinguished by their ear patches of bright golden-orange feathers - thrive on the islands at the northern reaches of Antarctica, with a total population of over two million breeding pairs.
Because King penguins sit on the food chain in their region, they are sensitive indicators of alterations to the marine ecosystem and feel the effects of climate change more keenly as a result - in this case, the warming is reducing their food supply.
Global warming is happening much more quickly in some parts of the frozen continent, particularly the north-west area known as the Antarctic Peninsula, where in the last 50 years temperatures have risen by about 2.5ºC - as much as five times the world average.
But for these penguins, which do not live near the peninsula, the effects are caused by a warming of sub polar sea surface temperatures.
A decade ago, Yvon Le Maho of the CNRS Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Strasbourg, and an engineer began a study of the breeding and survival of penguins on Possession Island in the Crozet Archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean that continued over the course of nine years, marking the birds with electronic tags under the skin as the penguins migrated.
With Céline Le Bohec and colleagues, Dr Le Maho shows today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that high sea surface temperatures in the penguins wintering range, where two thirds of the world’s population of this species reside, diminished the amount of available marine prey, which decreased the survival of adult King penguins since they had to travel greater distances to find food.
The birds feed on small fish and squid, relying less on krill and other small crustaceans than many other sea mammals, and the find suggests that these species are suffering as a result of warming of the Southern Ocean.
Using a mathematical model, the scientists calculate that there will be a nine per cent decline in the adult penguin population for every 0.26ºC of sea surface warming, suggesting that this population is at high risk under current global warming conditions, which predict an average increase of 0.2ºC per decade for the next two decades.
They conclude that there is a “heavy extinction risk” given current global warming predictions of a 0.4ºC rise over two decades, which cuts the chance of survival from 95 per cent to 80 per cent.
King penguins breed on seven sub-Antarctic island groups with large populations on the Falkland Islands, Macquarie Islands, Heard Island, Iles Crozet and Marion island and other sea birds will face similar problems.
A recent report by the environmental conservation group WWF is warning that rising temperatures and the resulting loss of sea ice is robbing other species of the emblematic birds of the nesting grounds they need to breed successfully while lading a reduction in the availability of krill which they rely on for food.
The most vulnerable is the biggest, the Emperor, but the Gentoo, Chinstrap, and Adélie have also suffered dramatic drops in population, according to the Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change report.
© 2008 The Telegraph
Human stewardship in action.
THANKS FOR THE WARNING. . .WHATS THE PROPOSED ACTION. . .WHAT ABOUT HUMAN EXTINCTION WHICH IS NOW AS POSSIBLE?
I’m all for it…
IKE KAY
‘what’s the proposed action’? is that a trick question?
KELMER ET AL
www.planetextinction.com
How much oil can Bush and his CIA render from a total population of over two million breeding pairs?
I agree global warming is the major cause of these trends, and that fossil fuels are the cause of global warming, but does factory fishing off South America contribute to the problem? Some of these nets take almost everything in the sea. Are they taking the smaller fish eaten by the penguins? Loss of predators can cause loss of prey, also.
bummer
The large species like penguins and bears will survive in zoos. It’s all the small and invisible ones I wonder about. In particular, 50% of the creatures we now meet in the deep ocean are new species.
The Earth is undergoing the largest species extinction event since the Cretaceous-Tertiary, 65.5M years ago. Then, it is thought to have been due to a major asteroid impact event. Today, that event is man.
Today’s extinction rate is approximately 100-1,000 times greater than normal (Levin, Amer. Sci., Jan 2002).
The canary in the mineshaft died years ago. We are living on borrowed time.
When the impact of growing human populations causes all wild species to be extinguished, safety in diversity will be no more. The human plague will depend solely on their handful of domestic animals and plants. Domestics that can be wiped out by a single microbe, leaving humans to starve.
Alternately or possibly in conjunction, a microbe will wipe out our h. sapiens monoculture if we don’t manage to off ourselves with advancing weaponry.
“HOW MUCH OIL COULD WE RENDER IF WE BOILED BUSH’S BRAIN? IF WE BOILED HIS LITTLE FAT ASS I BET WE COULD EXTRACT ABOUT TWO BARRELS WORTH.”
Why doesn’t someone shoot the stupid little bastard and save us all the stench?
Poor penguins suffering like everything else on the plantet due to humans being a destructive irriversable plague
This is bad for the Orca specie of whales, these birds are one of their prime sources of food.
You really should not post such comments about hte president Seditious. Is is a federal crime, in case you are unaware of it. It’s Okay to call him names.
And in the end we’ll kill something off that we need to live, and didn’t know we needed to live, for us to survive. And we we die. We will not be missed, in most cases.
I’ve noticed another extinction, the Bush 04 bumper sticker.
The Australian Rary parrots are extinct now too. Like the Dodo Bird.
“fossil fuels are the cause of global warming”? WAKE UP, brr001, the main cause of the climate crisis is the proliferation of greenhouse gases which, when trapped in our atmosphere, prevent the reflected escape of heat from the Sun. The most noxious of these gases, by far, is methane and the source– animal agriculture! Yes, feed-lot burping is responsible for the prospective extinction of our species, so, go vegan or go extinct!
newlight:
Thanks for the “correction”. Next time I see a Mauna Loa or Csiro report showing methane concentrations flat since 2000, or read a James Hansen, NOAA, NASA or IPCC report about CO2 being the primary GHG and mostly coming from fossil fuels, I’ll just have to remember that all these folks are wrong!
What’s it like always being right? (Even when you aren’t.)
Methane does eventually oxidize to CO2, and methane is in a steady state at the moment. What portion of CO2 actually starts out as cow farts?
Did you see the article about the farmer claiming his topsoil was 50% carbon and his little farm lost 7,000 tons of carbon every year? It must be a pretty good size hole in the ground by now.
Kem Patrick:
Is it seditious to hope Pinky and The Brain burn in hell AFTER they die some day?
Remeber - ALL is ONE.
We all fart and burp. We all contribute to CO2 levels. Vegans drive cars and fly in planes just as much as anyone else. George W. Bush is no more responsible for the demise of the penguins than the nice little old lady who lives across the street. Our parents are resonsible, our grandparents are responsible, our great grandparents are responsible. We are ALL responsible.
Yes, there is a mess extinction that is about to happen or is already happening.
We are all asleep, habitually moving through the day without thought of the impact our daily actions take. When we wake up we may find a different world than we thought was suppose to be. Take care of each other, even if you don’t like the other person because they eat meat or voted for Bush.
Take care. There are things happening in this world that are good, but it is hard to see it or feel it with all the noise around us. All the T.V., videos, computers, news, arguing, partying, going on is drowning out the goodness that is there. Take care - the world needs someone like you. Don’t walk away in disgust. Take care - hold the hand that seems lost or aimless, or asleep. Gently wake them up and show them the way Take care - we live on one planet. We are one family.
contemplative:
http://www.globalcommunity.org/
humorous:
http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml
AGAVE
‘we are all asleep, habitually moving through the day without thought of the impact our daily actions take.’
i like that sentiment. but i don’t think we are ALL asleep…… some of us surely know and care about the impact we have on earth…… i also agree with your sentiment of the noise around us. i can’t bear going to supermarkets because of the pumped out music or adverts….. it’s hideous. but how many hands can i hold at once???
Nope BR-001, that’s fine. And fitting.
I don’t know if you all have seen this, but here is a video of President Bush defending his global warming stance.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7408504973132978571
www.oneplanetonelife.com
Doom and Gloom,
“I’ve noticed another extinction, the Bush 04 bumper sticker.”
That was funny! (and true!)
COCO,
I know that not everyone is asleep.There are plenty of folks who care like you. We just don’t hear about them. However, I must admit that, for me. there are days when I’m exausted and I can’t keep up the good fight. Some days I feel so alone and I just want to take a break from it all and just have a good time, or be selfish. It’s really hard. I think it’s O.K. that we can maybe allow ourselves a break and not feel guilty about it. As long as we stay awake through the process.
And as far as how many hands you can hold at once? Yeah - there sure seems to be an overwhelming amount who need a hand. Just focus on maybe one or two hands at a time. If each one of us does that, then that is a lot of hands right there.
Agave — re: the obnoxious, pervasive background muzak in supermarkets and most other public places — try earplugs. I’ve taken to wearing these little pink plastic foam rubber blobs everytime I run the shopping gantlet, and it’s made things bearable. Try it: it won’t rock your world; it’ll turn it into an oasis of calm in the midst of the sound-polluted environment “corporate” America subjects us to in order to hypnotize us into buying more product.