Save the Penguins – Marcus B. (Yr 7)
Penguins have always been my favourite animal. I love the fluffy chicks, the way they waddle and the acrobatics that they perform underwater.
There are 17 – 19 species of penguins and they mainly live in the Southern Hemisphere. Penguins are birds but they cannot fly, they waddle across land or slide on the ice and are great swimmers and divers. Like many animals’ climate change is affecting penguins, particularly penguins that live in Antarctica like Emperor penguins. They need the sea ice to access food and as a place to lay eggs and hatch them. The world is warming and the ice in Antarctica is melting taking away their habitat. If things don’t change penguins could go extinct in 40 years.
As the ice from their home is melting and moving, they are being split up from their colonies and feeding spots. The US Fish and Wildfire Service are calling them ‘threatened species.’ So, scientist have come up with something that could help track different colonies and find the endangered ones so that we can help them.
Scientists are using technology to help the penguins. One of the ways to make this possible is by looking at images taken by satellites orbiting the Earth. They can track the penguins by looking at the image and using the poo stains that the penguins made on the ice to track colonies that have wandered away from the main habitat. Before all of this they were aware of 28 colonies and now they have discovered there are 66 colonies.
It is very hard to count how many penguins there are in a colony even whilst using images from satellites. Scientists can improve the population estimates of the penguins for each colony by observing the area’s weather, measuring wind speed and the temperature to reach a better estimate of the number of penguins scattered across and huddled together.
Technology could help the scientists and penguins because they can check the movements of penguins by placing an electronic tag on them. These scanners can be read by a robot that goes by the name of ECHO. ECHO can travel across the colonies and scan the tags of penguins to collect data from them. ECHO uses a camera and a laser to build up a picture of the area and avoid obstacles. The robot uses artificial intelligence so that it could recognise the penguins and move slowly so it doesn’t stress or freak out the penguins.
What can we do to stop this situation getting worse?
We can stop the temperature rising even more to protect the ice from melting by reducing carbon emissions and we can donate funds to scientists who are tracking the penguins, but we must act now to save this beautiful species. Personally, I am thinking about adopting a penguin.
Sources – BBC News, wwf.org, The Week Junior.
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