Destination Wild? South Africa’s Penguins vs. Eco Tourism
Location: Cape Peninsula, South Africa, and I was surrounded by tourists on a crowded walkway face to face with penguins and I felt sick to my stomach. It’s hard to believe that all I had to do to be a mere few feet from a breeding penguin colony was to park my car in a lot surrounded by restaurants and boutiques, walk two minutes and then enter Boulder’s Beach which is administered by South African National Parks (SANParks). It’s easy to get caught up feeling so amazed by watching penguin’s feed their young and work at protecting their nests from the harsh winds, but it then hit me as I looked to my left and right to see it built up by humans and see them from all across the world simply snapping photos. I was disturbed at the fact that this is their home and we have forced our way inside to the point that they are endangered and most people there had no idea that the African penguin needs our help. Boulders Beach is being marketed by SANParks as a tourist destination and makes approximately $2 million USD per year from their ticket sales (Lewls et al. 497). This all begs the question as to how are we able to protect the penguins while still promoting a city lifestyle and active tourism? Ecotourism needs to be utilized for better active management to protect the penguins and provide tourists with more environmental awareness.
According to Lewls et al, the advantage of tourism is to bring the awareness and focus to the colony on an international level and get more people involved in caring about the penguin’s welfare (502). With that goal in mind, I can’t help but reflect on my experience with my fellow classmates and professor’s as we played “tourist” for the day. I conducted my own informal interviews and asked tourists on the walkway where they were from and if they knew the African penguin was endangered. Most were from the United States and they had no idea that the penguins they were fawning over were fighting for their survival. SANParks efforts at promoting the penguin colony has benefited the local businesses by doing better than other areas financially, but how is all this revenue into the area benefiting the penguins? (502). The first step that needs to be implemented are guided talks from SANPark employees to tourists. A rehabilitation center I visited while in South Africa had that in place and it helped educate us more than just looking at the animals.
A second step for better active management would be to implement and expand no take zones. No take zones are a marine protected area set aside from direct human contact disturbance, and any extractions or dumping of materials. According to Pichegru et al, implementation of no-take zones showed a decrease in the distance and effort a penguin had to travel to get their food. Whereas in locations without this in affect there are studies that show a negative effect on the penguin’s ability to catch prey (122). However, fishing around “the line” of the no-take zones in 2010 appears to have compromised these benefits. The no-take zone “line” has benefited fishers by being able to catch more fish that flee from the protected area where Penguins are foraging, but this also affects the mobile fish and their opportunity to catch prey in the rest of the ocean (Pichegru et al. 122). A lot of the restaurants surrounding Boulder’s Beach penguin colony serve sea food. The irony of how the penguin colony is helping these businesses thrive while most of the ocean is still unprotected with small no-take zones was certainly not lost on me. That is why studies support the idea of more protected no-take zones for endangered species to help them sustain their feeding and breeding efforts (Pichegru et al. 123).
The final active management task to look at is the penguins heat tolerance. I know when I think about penguins I think about icy climates, but the South African penguin are sensitive and exposed to harsher elements. According to Pichegru et al. penguins breed in burrows to provide shelter from aerial predators, but also to prevent exposure to the high humidity climate and high winds. These weather factors are important because penguins leave their nests to go cool down in the sea which leaves their nests unattended and exposed. Unfortunately, this poses a risk to predators but also high fatality to infant penguins due to over heating or severe rains. As someone who was on the beach with the penguins, I was able to see their surface nests on a very windy day and all I could think about was how rough it must be for their newborn babies to withstand such harsh conditions. That is why the study conducted by Pichegru et al, supports the use of artificial nests for better protection against the elements and aerial prey to help save the African penguin population (2).
Works Cited
Lewis, Sef, et al. “Are African Penguins Worth Saving? The Ecotourism Value of the Boulders Beach Colony.” African Journal of Marine Science, vol. 34, no. 4, 2012, pp. 497–504., doi:10.2989/1814232x.2012.716008.
Pichegru, L., et al. “Industrial Fishing, No-Take Zones and Endangered Penguins.” Biological Conservation, vol. 156, 31 Dec. 2011, pp. 117–125., doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.12.013.
Pichegru, Lorien, et al. “Heat Tolerance in African Penguins in the Face of Climate Change .” Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology, 2014, www.fitzpatrick.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/275/News/News_Archive/2012/MSc-Penguin-heat-tolerance_methods.pdf.
