Yellow-eyed penguins / hoiho need your help!
Help us save New Zealand’s nationally endangered yellow-eyed penguins
The Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust has partnered with FLOAT – For Love Of All Things, to create awareness and raise funds for nationally endangered yellow-eyed penguins. We’re selling t-shirts and hooded sweatshirts from Tuesday 10th April 2018 for 1 week through FLOAT’s online shop www.float.org/yept.
For every item purchased, $8 is donated to the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust for the conservation of yellow-eyed penguins.
There are only 250 breeding pairs of yellow-eyed penguins left in New Zealand. As one of the most endangered penguins in the world, the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust needs your help to ensure we can continue our conservation work and ensure this penguin stays around for future generations to enjoy.
The issue
Hoiho face a number of threats at sea and on land which impact their survival and ultimately lead to a population decline. They have become casualties of human activities – historically they were hunted for food, fires destroyed vast tracts of habitat and people arrived with predators. Today these predators still roam the countryside and we continue to share the coastal space occupied by penguins, putting their lives at risk.
Terrestrial impacts such as predation and land-use changes, can for the most part be managed. But even on offshore islands without terrestrial impacts, a decrease in the hoiho population is evident. This indicates that marine impacts are a major cause of decline.
Our response
The Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust operates a comprehensive coastal conservation programme. We work to help hoiho by safeguarding their habitat (buying land for protection such as our reserve at Long Point/Irahuka), trapping mammalian predators including ferrets, stoats and cats, planting trees and shrubs to improve habitat, providing nesting opportunities, advocating for penguin conservation, and educating people on the plight on the penguin. This is in addition to our monitoring work with the penguins and research into impacts on the population.
