Climate change threatens emperor penguins with extinction, officials say - The Washington Post

“This listing reflects the increasing extinction crisis,” Martha Williams, the national wildlife agency’s director, said successful a statement, arsenic the bureau gave the iconic seabird extortion nether the Endangered Species Act. “Climate alteration is having a profound interaction connected taxon astir the world.”

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned Fish and Wildlife to support the emperor penguin successful 2011, arguing that the nonaccomplishment of oversea crystal driven by clime alteration volition enactment the penguin’s semipermanent endurance successful jeopardy.

With their last determination Tuesday, national officials agreed with that assessment, though it is unclear what circumstantial steps the authorities volition instrumentality to safeguard the penguin’s habitat.

While oversea crystal astir Antarctica has proved much durable than crystal adjacent the North Pole, astir each emperor penguin colonies successful the confederate continent would beryllium pushed to the brink of extinction by the extremity of the period without melodramatic cuts to planetary greenhouse state emissions, scientists precocious projected.

“That assemblage of subject truly helped to marque this determination truly clear,” said Shaye Wolf, the Center for Biological Diversity’s clime subject director. “That the penguin is endangered by clime alteration and needs each the extortion it tin get.”

The seabirds are utilized to enduring pugnacious times. Males walk 2 months incubating their ovum connected their feet portion females provender connected krill and squid successful the sea. After the ovum hatches, the parents instrumentality turns waddling dozens of miles to and from the water to provender their bare chick.

That travel — documented successful the 2005 movie “March of the Penguins” arsenic good arsenic successful the 2006 animated movie “Happy Feet” — turned the hardy, flightless seabird into an carnal icon of resilience.

Right now, the penguin’s colonisation appears stable, with betwixt 625,000 and 650,000 birds shuffling and sliding astir Antarctica.

But determination are already signs of what the aboriginal whitethorn clasp for the bird. The breakup of oversea crystal earlier chicks were acceptable to aquatics astatine Halley Bay and Cape Crozier led to breeding failures successful caller years.