A new form of real estate is popping up along the beaches of South Africa and on the dry, barren islands off its coast \u2013 tiny white beach huts. With good ventilation and a sea view, they are just big enough to fit a family of African penguins. Their unique selling point: a safe and cool place for penguins to breed.<\/p>\n

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In a report as part of\u00a0Call to Earth,\u00a0<\/em>CNN meets the conservationists behind the African Penguin Nest Project.<\/p>\n

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African penguins thrive in the cold currents of the South Atlantic Ocean. But when they come to land, their thick black coat absorbs the heat, and they desperately look for cover \u2013 both for themselves and their fragile eggs. Historically, the penguins dug burrows in layers of guano \u2013 accumulated seabird and bat faeces \u2013 that lined Africa\u2019s penguin colonies, but in the 19th century, traders started selling guano as fertiliser, leaving the penguins and their eggs increasingly exposed to predators and the scorching sun.<\/p>\n

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This, combined with other threats such as egg poaching, overfishing and climate change, has caused African penguin populations to plummet.<\/p>\n

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The African Penguin Nest Project is a coordinated effort between Dallas Zoo, AZA Safe, the Pan-African Association of Zoos and Aquaria, and the Dyer Island Conservation Trust \u2013 which aims to deploy artificial nests to give penguin parents a safe and shaded place to raise their chicks.<\/p>\n

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The project started to deploy the nests in late 2018. \u201cWithin a matter of minutes, penguins were running into them,\u201d says\u00a0Kevin Graham<\/strong>, associate curator of birds and ectotherms at Dallas Zoo and coordinator of the African Penguin Nest Project. \u201cThat tells you how desperate they are for any opportunity to find a safe place to nest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Graham says that population recovery depends on more than just giving African penguins a safe place to breed. It\u2019s not simply a case of \u201cwe give them a nest, the species is saved,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a big part of it, but there has to be more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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To date, the African Penguin Nest Project has installed more than 1,500 nests across five of South Africa\u2019s penguin colonies, and plans to expand into Namibia next year, the only other country with breeding populations of the species.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is still just a drop in the bucket,\u201d says Graham, who anticipates they will need to deploy at least 4,500 more ceramic homes to protect penguins currently nesting in exposed areas. \u201cThe goal is that every penguin that needs a nest will get one.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new form of real estate is popping up along the beaches of South Africa and on the dry, barren islands off its coast \u2013 tiny white beach huts. With good ventilation and a sea view, they are just big enough to fit a family of African penguins. Their unique selling point: a safe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,31,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-environment-and-climate","category-environment-developments","category-new","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6275,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions\/6275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenyaleo.co.ke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}