Penguins lured from brink of extinction by decoys

Decoy penguins and speakers blasting the recorded braying of a contented population have enticed endangered African penguins to establish a new colony at a deserted cove, offering fresh hope for saving the species from extinction. A crash in numbers has been blamed on rising sea temperatures and fish stocks moving away from their breeding grounds in South Africa and Namibia. The use of ‘‘passive attraction’’ ploys to establish a breeding site is the first recorded case of such human interventions being successful in the species, Christina Hagen, of BirdLife South Africa, the group leading the project, said. Researchers identified an isolated cove at De Hoop, a nature reserve on South Africa’s Indian Ocean southern coast, as an ideal new colony.