As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Monday 14 August 2017

Set nets killing 'hundreds' of penguins each year - Forest & Bird


9:02 am on 4 August 2017 
Eric Frykberg, Transport, Energy & Resource Infrastructure Reporter

Hundreds of penguins are likely dying in fishing nets each year, conservation group Forest & Bird says.

It said the birds, including the endangered hoiho / yellow-eyed penguin, were dying after being unintentionally snared in set nets moored close to the coast.

The group said material gathered from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) under the Official Information Act showed 14 penguin deaths occurred in the year from October 2015 to October 2016, but this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Thirteen of these were reported by MPI observers but only 3 percent of boats had MPI observers onboard, so the real number of penguin deaths had to be higher, it said.

Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague said this was not good news.

"It looks as if the fishing industry is killing hundreds of penguins in set net fisheries and almost none of it is being reported," he said.

That was because there was no mechanism to determine how many were dying.

No comments:

Post a Comment