21/03/2025
AFRICAN PENGUINS NOW HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE … BATTLE HAS BEEN WON, NOT THE WAR: “On Tuesday, 18 March, the Pretoria High Court issued an order making the settlement official between BirdLife South Africa (BLSA), the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) — represented by the Biodiversity Law Centre — the South African Pelagic Fishing Industry Association (Sapfia) and the Eastern and Southern Cape Pelagic Association — endorsed by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and Minister Dion George.
It was feared that, without the correct delineations of no-take zones for the commercial sardine and anchovy fishery around six key African penguin breeding colonies overlapping the commercial fishery, the species would have no chance of survival — especially against other threats it faces. African penguin numbers declined from 15,187 breeding pairs in 2018 to an estimated 8,750 at the end of 2023. In 2024, the species was moved from endangered to critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and is on track to be extinct in the wild by 2035.
The parties from both sides spoke to Daily Maverick about the details of this hard-fought settlement, hailed as an important step forward for African penguin conservation.”
READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-03-19-african-penguin-litigation-win-for-fishing-industry-conservation-groups/ A 'Save the African Penguin from Extinction' protest was held at Boulders Beach on 18 March 2025. Photos: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach
AFRICAN PENGUINS NOW HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE … A BATTLE HAS BEEN WON BUT NOT THE WAR: “On Tuesday, 18 March, the Pretoria High Court issued an order making the settlement official between BirdLife South Africa (BLSA), the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) — represented by the Biodiversity Law Centre — the South African Pelagic Fishing Industry Association (Sapfia) and the Eastern and Southern Cape Pelagic Association — endorsed by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) and Minister Dion George.
It was feared that, without the correct delineations of no-take zones for the commercial sardine and anchovy fishery around six key African penguin breeding colonies overlapping the commercial fishery, the species would have no chance of survival — especially against other threats it faces. African penguin numbers declined from 15,187 breeding pairs in 2018 to an estimated 8,750 at the end of 2023. In 2024, the species was moved from endangered to critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and is on track to be extinct in the wild by 2035.
The parties from both sides spoke to Daily Maverick about the details of this hard-fought settlement, hailed as an important step forward for African penguin conservation.”
READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-03-19-african-penguin-litigation-win-for-fishing-industry-conservation-groups/ A 'Save the African Penguin from Extinction' protest was held at Boulders Beach on 18 March 2025. Photos: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach
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“The narrow issue of the settlement was the delineations of the fishing closures around the six breeding colonies … “There was a lot of back and forth between conservation and the fishing industry. It was certainly not a straightforward process, because there was so much at stake for both parties. But after many, many iterations we were very thankful to reach an agreement,” said Nicky Stander, head of conservation at Sanccob after court proceedings on Tuesday. For African penguins, Stander said this gives them a fighting chance against threats leading to their extinction, and they will now have enough food in the vicinity of where they hunt for fish.
Kate Handley, executive director of the Biodiversity Law Centre, said: “It really was a difficult and long negotiation, with both sides trying their best to get the best for all the industry, for their constituents, and for the conservation sector, for penguins.”
… In terms of the trajectory of the penguin’s decline and the projected 2035 extinction date, Stander said this case and its outcomes were never going to be a silver bullet. “This was just a very important conservation intervention that was required. But there’s still so much work to be done. Specifically, I’m really looking forward to seeing whether the South African government will enforce these fishing closures and put the monitoring and evaluation plan in place, which is obviously critical to seeing how beneficial these closures are,”
Sanccob and BLSA said they would work with the DFFE to ensure these monitoring and evaluation plans are in place, and that they tackle all of the other pressures, as they have been doing over the years. These other threats include predation, the effects of climate change and oil pollution.
“All of those are still very significant threats, but we always maintain that food availability was the most pressing threat, and we really needed to have government to sort that out,” Stander said. Handley added that it was important to note that competition with the small pelagic fishing industry was not the only threat to African penguins, but that it was one of the most significant threats. “We have won the battle but not the war,” Handley said.
This was because the penguins were compromised in terms of their ability to catch prey and to nourish themselves. They then became much less resilient in the face of other threats such as oil spills, predation and ship-to-ship bunkering in Algoa Bay affecting their population decline.
Handley added that they would now rely on the DFFE and the minister to ensure full implementation of the court order and to follow through on taking all necessary steps to protect the African penguin. On Tuesday, Minister Dion George said the DFFE was committed to overseeing the effective implementation of these closures and would collaborate with stakeholders to monitor their impact on penguin populations.”
