Magellanic penguins nesting along the southern Atlantic and Pacific coasts in South America adjust relatively quickly to tourists, according to a study that somewhat allays concern that the growing popularity of ecotourism would cause them harm.
The researchers – who studied penguins in the largest and most visited Magellanic penguin colony at Punta Tombo, Argentina – studied the number of head turns the penguins exhibited as people approached, as well as the level of stress-related hormones the animals secreted.
“Head turns of penguins visited for 10 days were significantly lower than penguins visited for 5 days and were not significantly different than those of penguins living in the (popular) tourist area,” wrote Brian G. Walker, a biology professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. He wrote the paper, published in the February issue of Conservation Biology, along with University of Washington biology professors P. Dee Boersma and John C. Wingfield.
The authors cautioned that “long-term consequences are much harder to document, especially in long-lived animals such as Magellanic penguins. Our data show that quantifying the consequences of human disturbances on wildlife is rarely simple and straightforward.”
Greg Wetstone, U.S. director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, called the findings encouraging: “We still have a lot to learn, but this study reinforces (the) sense that responsible ecotourism can be a low-impact way to create economic pressure for protecting threatened wildlife.”
