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Antarctica’s penguins are sending us a distress signal

Something is breaking in the world’s wildest ecosystem.

This story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The world’s largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis, a study has revealed. Scientists said the rapid demise of chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica, increased the risk of a wider ecosystem collapse.

“It is an enormous population crash, equivalent to half a million breeding individuals being lost from that island,” said the leader of the research, professor Norman Ratcliffe, a penguin ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey.

The Guardian reported........

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