Granite Island penguins are on the brink of being wiped out

• Sarah Mennie
• From: Sunday Mail (SA)
• August 13, 2011

Granite Island penguin centre manager Dorothy Longden with a Little Penguin. Picture: Brooke Whatnall Source: Sunday Mail (SA)

 

GRANITE Island's penguin population is on the brink of being wiped out.

The number of penguins at the popular tourist destination has dropped from 1548 to 146 in the past 10 years and researchers fear tomorrow's penguin census will reveal the trend is continuing.
But penguin experts who work on the island say culling seals, an idea raised this week over concerns for Kangaroo Island's disappearing penguin population, is not the answer.
Natalie Gilbert, who works in penguin management and conservation at Granite Island Nature Park, said investigations had begun to determine what was responsible for the decrease.
"We need to investigate all possibilities," Ms Gilbert told the Sunday Mail.
"We shouldn't be making such important decisions (on culling seals) without being completely knowledgeable on the subject. We haven't been able to pinpoint the problem."

City of Victor Harbor director of planning and regulatory services Graham Pathuis said council would wait for recommendations from the research before determining if they could help.
Mr Pathuis said council would have to look at shifting the direction of local tourism if the penguins disappeared all together from the island.
"It's a long-standing tourism activity associated with Granite Island," he said.
But he was confident if the species vanished from the area tourism would not be affected overall. "There might be a shift, with more of a focus on other things; we have a large variety of tourism attractions."
Ms Gilbert said work was already being done to address the declining penguin numbers, including research and improving the habitat on Granite Island to encourage breeding.

A program encouraging people to bring in any dead penguins they discovered for autopsy was proving useful and indicated disease was not responsible for deaths.
"Some carcasses show definite evidence of predators," Ms Gilbert said.
"There's nothing conclusive. There's no doubt seals are involved but to what extent?"
As well as seals, other potential threats included dogs and cats, rats and possums.
As part of the program to save the Granite Island penguins, motion sensor cameras have been set up on the island to capture footage of predators in the penguin colonies.

Penguins are also being tagged with microchips for future identification and a tag reader has been installed that records when the penguin goes to and from the sea. School children and volunteers recently made and installed 35 penguin nesting boxes.
Vegetation on the island is also closely monitored to ensure it meets the penguins' needs and Ms Gilbert said fish stocks did not appear to be a problem for the penguins. Penguin ecologist Annelise Wiebkin said while there was no denying seals were part of the problem, culling them was not the answer.

"If we started culling them we would have to keep that up at a huge rate and also they're a native species," Ms Wiebkin said. "And there's just not enough information to prove it's going to work."
Ms Wiebkin said the best way of dealing with the problem was managing things on the land.
"If land predators like cats, rats and dogs are an issue - which have been in other colonies in Australia - if we can address that and improve habitat, that might counteract things happening out at sea," she said.
She said some areas of Granite Island could be fenced off to protect the penguins from land predators.

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