25th August 2008, 7:00 WST
The West Australian
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=93864
Penguin Island’s future as a breeding ground for little penguins is in danger, with a local expert warning that fishing and boating are increasingly threatening the Rockingham island’s unique population.
“We are encroaching on their territory,” Murdoch University penguin researcher Belinda Cannell said. “If we impact it too much, then they don’t survive.”
Dr Cannell has worked on little penguins for 18 years and is completing a three-year research program with the University of NSW and partners, including the Department of Environment and Conservation.
The program will gauge the present and future threats to the little penguin colony, which is home to more than 1000 of the birds.
Dr Cannell said that despite years of study it was not known exactly how many penguins lived on the island and how the number had changed.
The project marks the first time the penguins have been studied in such detail, measuring the number of penguins on the island, as well as information on birth and death rates and diet.
Over the past two years Dr Cannell has micro chipped 850 penguins as part of a mark and recapture program, as well as satellite tracking adults as they venture out to sea and as they incubate eggs or guard chicks.
Dr Cannell said there were a number of threats to the Penguin Island colony.
“The biggest potential threats for the penguins are food availability, water craft strikes and fishing line entanglement,” she said. “There are also things like water quality issues, oil pollution and loss of nesting habitat.”
But Dr Cannell said her greatest concern was that a whitebait breeding ground which the colony relied on for food was under threat from a proposed boat ramp near Port Kennedy.
“We know that Becher Point at the bottom of Port Kennedy is a very productive whitebait nursery,” she said. “The birds feed on this whitebait and use it for their chick rearing.”
The threats to the penguins were likely to grow with the increasing population in the Rockingham area, the fastest growing coastal area in WA. The population was expected to increase by 65 per cent in the next 15 years, resulting in more people using the coast for recreation and the bays closest to the penguin colonies, she said.
Penguin Island was the most western colony of little penguins in the world and the most northern in WA and was an important colony in conservation terms, Dr Cannell said.
“The colony has been assessed to have the highest conservation value whilst under the highest relative threat compared to other major marine fauna found in the same region,” she said.
Research by Dr Cannell’s colleagues at Victoria’s Deakin University and the University of NSW had indicated the colony warranted protection.
“It is genetically different even from those in the South-West,” Dr Cannell said.
The DEC said it was working with Dr Cannell to monitor the penguins. It had completed a sand renourishment program to ensure protection of nesting sites following winter storm erosion.
KATE TARALA
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