African Penguins Population
African Penguin populations, living on the southern African coast, have declined from 2 million pairs in the mid-19th century to only 25,000 pairs today. At the turn of the 19th century and during the first decades of the 20th, the harvesting of hundreds of thousands of penguin eggs each year. Their food source primarily consists of cheap food, placed additional pressure on the penguin population. 50 years later, in the 1960s and 1970s, overfishing reduced the penguins’ food supply. More recently, an eastward migration of sardines, a key food resource for the penguins, has reduced their numbers even more. African Penguins numbered more then 1.5 Million in 1910. However guano scrapping and egg harvesting have reduced the African Penguins population by 90%. The population had made a comeback in the early 1900’s but then two oil spills took a toll on the species
This is a chart of the population of the African Penguin.
Sites Sourced
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0302-penguins.html