How the Nest Was Won

Update: We’re happy to announce that we’ve already surpassed our initial goal of raising $150,000! That’s enough to build 1,500 nests in penguin colonies around South Africa and Namibia. By backing Invest in the Nest, you are powering a unique conservation project that can help bring African penguins back from the brink of extinction. Thank you for helping to conserve wildlife!

Originally published May 19, 2017:

Today is Endangered Species Day. This occasion was initiated a dozen years ago to call attention to the plight of the world’s endangered and threatened species and the Endangered Species Act, created in 1973, which seeks to protect, conserve and restore imperiled species populations.

It’s also a nice moment to call attention to actions people can take to make a difference for wildlife. Let’s start with pitching in for penguins.

Lincoln Park Zoo is supporting an “Invest in the Nest” Kickstarter campaign to design, produce and place 1,500 artificial nests for wild African penguins in South Africa and Namibia.

This effort is part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction initiative. African penguins are among the first 10 endangered species selected by SAFE, which launched in 2015. The idea is to bring a laser-like focus to species recovery efforts by harnessing the collective expertise, resources and public outreach of AZA member institutions and partners.

Lincoln Park Zoo also participates in the AZA’s African Penguin Species Survival Plan® (SSP) and conservation education efforts through our Robert and Mayari Pritzker Penguin Cove exhibit, a state-of-the-art home for African penguins that opened last year. Visitors can even go inside the exhibit and meet the colony during a guided Penguin Encounter experience. During these immersive encounters zoo educators share information about conservation challenges and efforts.

“Public engagement is an important component of SAFE as well,” says Hope B. McCormick Curator of Birds Sunny Nelson. “Penguin Encounter helps us fulfill the zoo’s mission to connect people with nature. But even AZA institutions that don’t have African penguins can share these conservation messages through educational initiatives.”

Above: Lincoln Park Zoo’s Penguin Encounter experience introduces guests to the African penguins at Pritzker Penguin Cove and shares what their daily lives are like at the zoo and on the southern African coast.

The Kickstarter campaign, which runs through June 16, is another way we hope to turn the tide for African penguins. Native to rocky offshore islands and beaches along the southern African coast, their wild population has plummeted from an estimated 4 million two centuries ago to 1 million a century ago to only about 50,000 today. Commercial fishing and warming ocean currents that have decreased and shifted prey populations are causes. So is the removal from colony nesting sites of guano for agricultural fertilizer, a practice now prohibited. African penguin mated pairs have historically built nests by burrowing into its petrified accumulation.

With so much of that building material now gone, conservationists have been fabricating artificial nest boxes and placing them in colonies for breeding pairs.

AZA SAFE partners spent three months rigorously field-testing different nest prototypes to create the perfect penguin home. As you’ll learn on the Kickstarter web page, “Special materials ensure the optimal temperature for penguin egg gestation inside, and hold up to predators on the outside. But those special materials make it impossible to fabricate the nests by machine, so each one is made by hand by local South African workers.” So this project is helping to create jobs for local residents as well.

AZA also reports these impressive statistics: “From 2011 to 2015, more than 44 AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums took part in or supported African penguin field conservation projects. Over those five years, the AZA community invested in-kind or directly more than $530,000 in African penguin conservation. Supported projects have provided financial support to facilities that rescue, rehabilitate, and reintroduce both adult penguins and their chicks, as well as to keep animal keepers and other staff to help support conservation efforts.”

Establishing new artificial nests is a priority identified in the AZA SAFE African penguin conservation action plan. It’s necessary to help save African penguins, and through this campaign you can play a direct role in helping to save this species. Thank you for taking action with us to protect wildlife.

Kevin Bell