Shoring Up Protections for Patagonia’s Penguins
Clarita emerged from the surf and shuffled to her nest at El Pedral, a Magellanic penguin colony protected by Global Penguin Society (GPS) for the past 15 years. GPS dubbed Clarita “the mother of Pedral” because she was the colony’s first penguin to ever hatch a chick, and every year, she returns to this same Patagonian coast to breed. El Pedral was once covered in garbage and plagued by threats, but GPS cleaned up the beach and worked with the Argentinian government to make it a protected wildlife refuge, growing from six pairs of penguins in 2008 to over 4,000 pairs today.
El Pedral is located in what will soon be the Punta Ninfas Protected Area: 610,000 acres—nearly twice the size of Los Angeles—of protected marine and coastal habitat for penguins and other wildlife. GPS is collaborating with the government to establish this protected area, and once approved, this vital ecosystem will forever be safeguarded from human disturbances like fisheries and plastic pollution.
Clarita, nearly 20 years old, shared her nest with a large plastic soda bottle when she first made El Pedral her home, but thanks to the continuous efforts of GPS, she and her fellow penguins won’t need to worry about nesting on unsafe shores again.
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