Climate and human stressors on global penguin hotspots: Current assessments for future conservation

• Published in: Global Change Biology
• Main Authors: Gimeno, Míriam, Giménez, Joan, Chiaradia, Andre, Davis, Lloyd, S, Seddon, Philip, J, Ropert‐coudert, Yan, Reisinger, Ryan, R, Coll, Marta, Ramírez, Francisco
• Other Authors: Institute of Marine Sciences / Institut de Ciències del Mar Barcelona (ICM), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas España = Spanish National Research Council Spain (CSIC), Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón Saragoza, España (ICMA-CSIC), University of Zaragoza - Universidad de Zaragoza Zaragoza, Phillip Island Nature Parks Australia, University of Otago Dunedin, Nouvelle-Zélande, Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372 (CEBC), La Rochelle Université (ULR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), School of Ocean and Earth Science UK, University of Southampton
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2024
• Subjects: environmental trends; fisheries; global change; human pressures; marine systems; sentinels; Southern Hemisphere; threats; [SDE]Environmental Sciences; New Zealand; Antarc*; antarcticus; Chinstrap penguin
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04416804; https://hal.science/hal-04416804/document; https://hal.science/hal-04416804/file/Gimeno_GCB.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17143

International audience As charismatic and iconic species, penguins can act as “ambassadors” or flagship species to promote the conservation of marine habitats in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, there is a lack of reliable, comprehensive, and systematic analysis aimed at compiling spatially explicit assessments of the multiple impacts that the world's 18 species of penguin are facing. We provide such an assessment by combining the available penguin occurrence information from Global Biodiversity Information Facility (>800,000 occurrences) with three main stressors: climate-driven environmental changes at sea, industrial fisheries, and human disturbances on land. Our analyses provide a quantitative assessment of how these impacts are unevenly distributed spatially within species' distribution ranges. Consequently, contrasting pressures are expected among species, and populations within species. The areas coinciding with the greatest impacts for penguins are the coast of Perú, the Patagonian Shelf, the Benguela upwelling region, and the Australian and New Zealand coasts. When weighting these potential stressors with species-specific vulnerabilities, Humboldt (Spheniscus humboldti), African (Spheniscus demersus), and Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarcticus) emerge as the species under the most pressure. Our approach explicitly differentiates between climate and human stressors, since the more achievable management of local anthropogenic stressors (e.g., fisheries and land-based threats) may provide a suitable means for facilitating cumulative impacts on penguins, especially where they may remain resilient to global processes such as climate change. Moreover, our study highlights some poorly represented species such as the Northern Rockhopper (Eudyptes moseleyi), Snares (Eudyptes robustus), and Erect-crested penguin (Eudyptes sclateri) that need internationally coordinated efforts for data acquisition and data sharing to understand their spatial distribution properly.