Penguins are in trouble

Penguins setting off sirens over health of world's oceans | Vince Stricherz | EurekAlert | Jul 1, 2008

This article is from a while back, and it references a paper published in BioScience in the July/Aug 2008 issue. According to the latest research, populations of different penguin species are declining not only due to overfishing and pollution, but also due to climate change. Increasing temperatures are causing sea ice to retreat earlier in the year before baby penguins have developed insulating fat and feathers, and it's also causing fish populations that penguins depend on to migrate farther and farther away.

I was pretty surprised that I hadn't heard about this sooner. One would think that if a cute and cuddly charismatic megafauna were in trouble, it would get a lot of attention. (It definitely made me feel a bit heartbroken to know that baby penguins are freezing to death.) Maybe it's because no one has photographed a penguin floating on a piece of sea ice yet or maybe it's because 2008 has been an unusually eventful year. In any case, just wanted to put this out there.

(Thanks for adding me to the blog, Kristine!)