Penguins: disturbing decline in population in Antarctica

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States has just published a report which revealed alarmingfigures on penguin populations in Antarctica. According to thisstudy the root cause of this is climate change, which affected the amount of krill available, the main food of penguins.

The Adélie penguin populations and Chinstrap PenguinsenAntártida come dragging in recent years a disturbing rate ofannual decline of 2.9% and 4.3% respectively. And to extrapolatethis to a longer-term analysis, the result is even worse: somecolonies have been reduced to 50% the number of individuals inthe past 30 years.

The clearest result of this drastic population decline is thereduction of one of their main food source, krill (crustacean). Theamount of krill in the sea has been declining in the 80's and isestimated to have come down between 75% and 80% in the Antarctic Peninsula due to ecosystem changes resulting fromglobal warming.

Thanks to BLOGVERDE