The Last Remaining Mainland Breeding Colony of Little Penguins in NSW
The Manly colony of Little Penguins in Sydney Harbour is the only mainland colony left in NSW. All other colonies are restricted to offshore islands due to predators. Due to this and the small size of the colony, the Manly Little Penguins were listed as an endangered population. For the first time in 2005 captive-bred penguins were released into the Manly colony to boost population numbers.
Breeding season is the time of year when the birds are most vulnerable. At Manly, volunteer Penguin Wardens watch over the colony from July to January. Every night from 6 to 12 PM, the volunteers safeguard the colony and answer questions from the local community. They are ambassadors for the endangered Little Penguins of Manly, Sydney Harbour.
They help with monitoring of the endangered colony and provide members of the public with accurate information about the penguins, their habitat and their needs. The Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife supports the volunteers by providing polar fleeces, beanies and gloves and other equipment. This project has received generous funding from Rotary.
The Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife would particularly like to thank the penguin wardens Angelika Treichler and Johnyth Burton for their bravery and dedication while protecting Manly's population of Little Penguins. In January 2011 they had to defend Manly's little penguins from disturbance. Click the link to read the media article about their incident.
Over the past six years the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife has funded both the monitoring of Manly’s endangered Little Penguin colony and the installation of artificial nest boxes to help increase the birds' breeding success and to make the captive-bred arrivals feel at home. The nest boxes have proven a higher than average breeding success since.
The Foundation is committed to keep up the support. The boxes need to be replaced quite frequently due to termites and the penguins’ own housekeeping. New nest boxes are funded through the Foundation's Backyard Buddies program.
Monitoring data has been collected over past breeding seasons allowing a comparison of breeding success. Since monitoring started in 2000, the number of penguins has remained constant over this time despite the impacts of oil spills, foxes and dogs.
