bripat9643
Diamond Member
- Apr 1, 2011
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ANTARCTIC PENGUIN CENSUS SHOWS SEABIRDS ARE THRIVING
For the first time, researchers have counted all the worlds Adélie penguinsa sprightly seabird considered a bellwether of climate changeand discovered that millions of them are thriving in and around Antarctica.
Rather than declining as feared due to warming temperatures that altered their habitats in some areas, the Adélie population generally is on the rise, the scientists said Thursday.
What we found surprised everyone, said ecologist Heather Lynch at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., who led the penguin census. We found a 53% increase in abundance globally.
Counting the birds by satellite, Dr. Lynch and imaging specialist Michelle LaRue at the University of Minnesota found that the Adélie penguin population now numbers 3.79 million breeding pairsabout 1.1 million more pairs than 20 years ago. In all, they identified 251 penguin colonies and surveyed 41 of them for the first time, including 17 apparently new colonies.
The researchers found eight abandoned penguin colonies on the Antarctic Peninsula, where regional temperatures have been rising faster in recent decades than across the continent as a whole.
That loss, however, was offset by new colonies that sprouted up elsewhere in Antarctica and by growth in previously known colonies since the last general penguin census was carried out in 1993, the scientists said.
The gains on the continent more than offset the losses on the peninsula, Dr. Lynch said. For now, that is good news.
Global warming makes penguins horny!
Bad news for the AGW cult, though. No huge piles of dead penguins to stand on and preach doom from.
Who would have thought that warmer temperatures would be good for animal life!
