Lovelace, the rockhopper penguin that answers life's questions
in the animated film "Happy Feet", probably would be just as
stumped as the researchers who reported Friday that the
population of his northern relatives has declined by 90 percent
over the last 50 years. The population of northern rockhopper
penguins once reached into the millions, but now the largest
colonies are estimated at between 32,000 to 65,000 pairs on
Gough Island, and 40,000 to 50,000 pairs on Tristan da Cunha
Island, according to a study in the journal Bird Conservation
International. Those two South Atlantic islands, which are
British overseas territories, account for more than 80 percent
of the total species population. "Historically, we know that
penguins were exploited by people, and that wild dogs and pigs
probably had an impact on their numbers," Richard Cuthbert of
the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and lead author of
the paper, said in a statement. "However, these factors cannot
explain the staggering declines since