Dominic Naidoo (Weekend Argus 8 December: Court battle over African penguin delayed) is certainly correct on two points.
First, the continuing decline of the African penguin population sees it in a dire situation. Second, this needs to be addressed based on the best available scientific evidence, as required by South African law.
But what does such evidence indicate? Naidoo ascribes the penguin decline to food shortages caused by commercial fishing of small pelagic fish, the penguins’ primary food source.
However, last year’s International Scientific Review Panel concluded that the impact of fishing around penguin breeding colonies is small relative to the estimated rates of penguin decline. Subsequent work has shown that the highest penguin death rates occurred some twenty years ago, at a time when sardine abundance was near a then recent high. Hence, the decline of the penguins cannot be attributed mainly to food shortages.
The obvious priority is to determine and address the major reasons for the penguin decline, of which fishing is not currently indicated to be one, on the basis of the best available scientific evidence.
Birdlife/SANCCOB’s (South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds) court application is flawed at its basis. It relies on reference to certain “recommendations” supposedly made by the International Panel.
But the Panel did not make those specific “recommendations”. Their report followed standard practice in international scientific marine resource fora of using the word “recommendation” if and only if a formal recommendation was being made.
Furthermore, the Panel restricted its report to scientific matters, and did not advise on management policy aspects. Accordingly, it commented on the likely impact of island closures as indicated by the science, but did not advise on the policy issue of whether these closures should be implemented. The Panel made no ‘recommendations’ in that regard.
Birdlife/SANCCOB’s court application seeks to close certain areas to fishing where they calculate the sizes of these areas under the implicit assumption that penguins can swim about as fast as a Boeing flies. As above, Birdlife/SANCCOB simply fail or are unable to respond when key scientific questions about their reasoning are raised.
These Environmental Non-Government Organisations (ENGOs) are clearly well-intentioned in bringing their court application. But the key question is whether this application is actually in the best interests of the penguins and addressing their decline, or instead counter-productive.
The court application’s real impact over the past year has been to see a virtual cessation in the activities needed to address this decline. As a result of Birdlife’s application, DFFE (the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment) has not progressed to implement any measures intended to address the decline of the penguins. The application has stifled any scientifically justified measures being considered and put in place.
The resources required by the resultant legal exchanges have seen DFFE confused, and failing to expedite organising for suggestions made in the International Panel’s report to be addressed. Industry have, for the same reasons, been delayed in improving their estimates of the costs of closures as suggested by the Panel.
Reliable estimates of these costs are the primary input needed by the Minister to make the key trade-off decision. This is to choose a balance between a diminished rate of decline in penguins as a result of fishing closures on the one hand, and the loss of jobs and the associated socio-economic impact on fishing communities on the other.
Is it not time for Birdlife/SANCCOB to withdraw their court application, which is hardly compatible with the best available scientific evidence? This is so that their and others’ limited resources can instead be focussed on determining the actions needed to ameliorate, and hopefully reverse, the penguin decline.
Or do we sit by and fiddle while Rome burns?
* Professor Emeritus Doug Butterworth, University of Cape Town.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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