Discord over how to save penguins
She said three summers ago Doc monitored the outcome of different treatment options for the disease but did not look at antibiotic use due to the high level of intervention/disturbance it required.
Instead, the removal of the lesions the disease caused in chicks’ mouths was found to be effective — and required one visit as opposed to the five antibiotics treatments would require.
Doc still considered antibiotics treatments an option ‘‘if warranted’’, but given the intervention involved, would not choose it lightly.
The reasons behind nest failure were complex and varied between sites, she said, and applying one management method without taking account of local conditions was, in addition to being wasteful of resources, a potential source of pathogens.
Further, Doc Coastal Otago operations manager Annie Wallace said due to the dispersal of penguin nests along the Otago and Southland coastline regular access was difficult and in some cases made intervention not viable.
The birds faced ‘‘a range of threats, posing some critical management challenges for all those working on their recovery’’.
‘‘We recognise the seriousness of the situation for hoiho with numbers of this taonga species continuing to decline at key nesting sites despite robust predator control and other landbased interventions,’’ she wrote in an email.
‘‘We are urgently working with MPI [the Ministry for Primary Industries], Ngai Tahu, the Yelloweyed Penguin Trust, other site managers and others involved in their recovery to better understand the factors contributing to their decline.’’
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage said she was ‘‘seriously concerned’’ by the ongoing decline of yelloweyed penguin numbers.
She noted Doc’s work on a recovery plan for the species with Ngai Tahu and the Yelloweyed Penguin Trust, as well as her request that Doc investigate ‘‘potential impacts’’ on the birds from being caught in fishing nets ‘‘and how to best deal with this’’.
Doc confirmed it had compiled a list of nest checks from a variety of sources but declined to share it with the ODT as it ‘‘might be a little bit sensitive or incomplete or in process’’.