Rockhopper Penguin.
Calgary Zoo.
The eastern rockhopper penguin breeds on subantarctic islands in the New Zealand region (including Australia’s Macquarie Island) and in the Indian Ocean. Recent research has suggested that the eastern rockhopper penguin is genetically distinct from two closely-related species: the western (or southern) rockhopper penguin, which breeds on islands around southern South America and the Falkland Islands, and Moseley’s (or northern) rockhopper penguin, which breeds on a few temperate islands in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taken together, rockhopper penguins have a broad circumpolar breeding distribution spanning 37-53° latitude. Large-scale population declines of each species occurred at many breeding sites across their range in the 20th Century, perhaps accelerating in recent decades. A global population of more than 5.5 million breeding pairs of rockhopper penguins declined to less than 1.5 million, including a dramatic decline at New Zealand’s Campbell Island. Original public domain image from Flickr