Injured “little penguins”—the world’s smallest species of penguin—have been stolen in the dead of night from their home on Granite Island in Southern Australia.
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While the uninhabited island is quiet in the middle of the night, thieves have been climbing over the six-foot concrete fences to take little penguins (Eudyptula minor) from the Granite Island Penguin Center—an enclosure run by volunteers to care for injured penguins.
The center’s coordinator, Dorothy Longden, said that three penguins have been stolen from the already dwindling penguin population on the island. Just a decade ago, the island had 2,000 penguins, but now it only has 146 penguins, as of last August’s census.
“Lately we’ve had a lot of people climbing over the wall and taking penguins out of the area, “ said Longden. “These penguins will not survive in the wild, and you cannot keep a penguin as a pet, because they need other penguins and they live in a colony.”
Longden, who has worked at the center for seven years, said that the staff members at the center have no idea what the thieves do with the penguins, but they presume the birds are either sold, released to the wild, or kept as pets. At only 12 to 13 inches tall, they are particularly easy for humans to carry away, says Longden.
“So it’s a permanent residence for some penguins,” Longden said.
The island, situated off Victor Harbor, is connected to the mainland by a causeway. Longden said that for the past three years, people have been stealing penguins and vandalizing their habitat after accessing the island.
“People walk across, and animals such as dogs and cats can get across. What we do need is to close the causeway at nighttime,” said Longden, adding that probably that will entail putting up a gate.
However, the entire island is a park controlled by National Parks and Wildlife Service of the Department of Environment and should be accessible to all.
“They say it’s a recreational park, and fishermen like to come out at night to fish, so having a gate would be hard for the fishermen,” said Longden. “But little penguins come back [to the island] every night. This is their home.”
In the daytime, the penguins are out at sea fishing but will come back to the island at dusk to rest in individual burrows.
Last September, the center’s staff members found a stolen penguin left on the pathway the next morning.
“He had a big bump on his head,” Longden said. “We think he was dropped and managed to find his way back to the center. He was on the pathway when we found him. He wanted to come back home.”
Little penguins are only found on the coastlines of Southern Australia and New Zealand.
