Chinstrap Penguin Population In The Last 50 Years

The chinstrap penguin has a cap of black plumage, a white face, and a continuous band of black feathers extending from one side of the head to the other, the “chinstrap.” The northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula, several Antarctic and subantarctic islands, and the uninhabited Balleny Islands between Antarctica and New Zealand are the habitats of the species. Antarctic penguin colonies in some parts of the Antarctic have declined over the last 50 years, mostly because of climate change, researchers say. The colonies of chinstrap penguins, also known as ringed or bearded penguins, have dramatically dropped since they were last surveyed almost 50 years ago, scientists discovered. The findings became surprising because, until now, the chinstraps have been deemed of “least concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). “We really didn’t know what to expect, and then we found this huge decline on Elephant Island,” Noah Strycker, an ornithologist and penguin researcher at Stony Brook University, told CNN from Greenpeace’s Esperanza ship in the Antarctic. “It’s a little bit worrying as it means that something is shifting in the ecosystem and the fall in penguin numbers is reflecting that shift.” Every colony of Elephant Island, which is a crucial penguin habitat northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, when surveyed, experienced a population fall, as per the independent researchers who joined a Greenpeace expedition to the region. Elephant Island was last surveyed in 1971, and there were 122,550 pairs of penguins across all colonies. However, the recent…