Author: Susan Milius / Source: Science News
What was once the king of the king penguin colonies has lost 85 percent or more of its big showy birds since the 1980s, a drop perhaps big enough to shrink the whole species population by a third.
In its glory days, an island called Île aux Cochons in the southern Indian Ocean ranked as the largest colony of king penguins. Satellite data suggest numbers peaked at around 500,000 breeding pairs amidst a total of 2 million birds in the 1980s, says seabird specialist Henri Weimerskirch based at University of La Rochelle with CNRS, the French national research service. A 2015 satellite analysis and a 2016 helicopter survey, however, respectively showed only 77,000 and 51,000 breeding pairs on the island, Weimerskirch and colleagues report in the August Antarctic Science.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature ranks king penguins in the category of least concern for risk…
The post With one island’s losses, the king penguin species shrinks by a third appeared first on FeedBox.