South Africa to ban fishing around African penguin colonies for 10 years

South Africa will impose a decadelong ban on commercial fishing around six areas home to the endangered African penguin starting next year. The measure, announced by the government on 4 August, comes after an expert panel concluded that a full ban on fishing was vital for the recovery of Africa’s only penguin species. Scientists and environmental groups have praised the move. “This is an extremely important decision, made in an emerging economy context, where so often short-term socioeconomic imperatives override longer term environmental concerns,” says Guy Midgley, interim director of the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University. African penguins ( Spheniscus demersus ) are only found along the coastline of Namibia and South Africa and are considered at risk of extinction. The number of breeding pairs in South Africa plummeted by 73% from 1991 to 2021, dropping from 42,500 to 10,400. Scientists partly attribute the crash to a fall in stocks of anchovy and sardine—the birds’ main food source—because of environmental changes and commercial fishing around island breeding colonies. To see whether limiting fishing could help penguin populations bounce back, between 2008 and 2021 officials experimented with closing the waters around some islands for staggered 3-year periods. This island closure experiment showed that eliminating fishing pressure in the vicinity of the colonies would have a modest impact, increasing the penguin ...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news