Our next stop, near the Lanarch castle, is the Penguin Conservation Reserve. These are Yellow-eyed Penguins whose existence is listed as threatened. I think that’s one step above ‘endangered’.
I love penguins. Something about the fact that penguins belong to the ‘other half’ of the world from my northern hemisphere. We have polar bears; they have penguins. And there’s something about the survival mechanisms that have evolved differently in various parts of the southern hemisphere. In the far south, penguins huddle together in bitter cold, taking turns at the chillier edge and the warmer inner section; protecting newly hatched young under the feathers and belly that rest above their feet; the way the slide down ice as if they were in a frozen playground...
But I digress...we’re off to see the Yellow-Eyed penguins, who live in a more temperate climate. The Yellow-Eyed penguins, known as ‘Hoiho’ to the Maori, once thrived in southern New Zealand.
It is an unfortunate side effect of human migration that we bring with us things that don’t belong where we’re going, and remove things that are necessary to the lives of creatures already there. The introduction of European mammals (dogs, cats, and more), and the development of land for agriculture, are just a few things that encroach on original populations and environment. This isn’t new--humans have done this for 80,000 years (more or less). For the yellow-eyed penguins, it has meant the destruction of natural habitat and a decline in population that has placed them on the ‘threatened’ list of species.
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| Yellow Eyed penguin |
Yellow-Eyed penguins (‘hoihoo’) are generally about two feet tall. (For those of you who know me--I am taller. I don't get to say that very often.) Their natural habitat is in coastal forests where they once had the underbrush for protection and access to the sea for food. These penguins like their privacy, so nests are separate from each other--they don’t huddle like the Antarctic penguins.
The arrival of humans, non-native predators, and farms virtually eliminated the penguin habitat. In the area we visit, property owned by sheep farmer Howard McGrouther, the number of breeding Yellow Eyed Penguins was about a dozen (or less) by 1985. McGrouther took it upon himself to establish Penguin Place, a suitable home for the penguins to breed at the same time that he preserved grazing property for his sheep.
Annually the conservation team plants native grown vegetation in the reserve and creates ‘nest boxes’ the provide optimum breeding conditions. At the same time, the reserve has taken measures to reduce the impact of introduced predator species (like dogs, ferrets, etc) and established a care center for injured penguins. Rehabilitated or newly hatched penguins are banded to help track their lives and the population in general.
All that data cannot properly describe the experience we have.
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| The Road to the Penguins |
The conservationists have built camouflaged trenches to keep the penguins from being startled by humans. They’ve taken great pains to replant natural vegetation and protect it from the intruder species that would devour or overgrow young plants.
The Trench -- path to penguins
Hoihoo trench entrance
You can see the trench is designed to cause minimal disruption above ground. There is a viewing space cut into the top section of the walls, so we can watch and photograph.
We follow our guide, run along a covered tunnel to a viewing area, are careful to be quiet, whisper, turn off our flashes, keep lenses and limbs inside the tunnel. In the next post, I'll provide a short video giving you an idea of the experience from our point of view (couldn't really do it from the penguins') and a great description, courtesy of my friend Gary, of that trench you're seeing above.
Yellow-Eyed Penguins- to be continued
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