International African Penguin Awareness Day Date in the current year: October 12, 2024

A lot of people think that penguins live only in cold climates somewhere around the South Pole. Although the overwhelming majority of penguins, with the exception of the Galapagos penguin, do live exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere, they can be found in warm climates along the coastal areas of South America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus), also known as South African penguin and Cape penguin, lives in southern African waters along the coast of Namibia and South Africa, while its closest relatives (the Magellanic penguin, the Humboldt penguin and the Galapagos penguin) all live in South America. These four penguin species are collectively known as banded penguins.

There are colonies of African penguins on 24 islands and three mainland colonies, one in Namibia and two in South Africa (Stony Point in Betty’s Bay and Boulders Beach near Cape Town). The mainland colonies were established relatively recently due to a decline in the numbers of terrestrial predators.

The African penguin faces a number of natural and man-made threats that have led to its threatened status. They include egg collection, commercial fishing (which deprives African penguins of their food source), petrochemicals from oil spills, habitat loss and destruction, climate change, disease, marine and terrestrial predators, and the removal of guano from beaches, which penguins use as burrowing material.

The African penguin is listed as an endangered species on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. As of 2018, the number of African penguins in the wild was 50,000 and declining (just compare it to 4 million African penguins that existed two hundred years ago or even 1.5 million that existed in the early 20th century).

The inaugural International African Penguin Awareness Day was observed on October 2, 2010. Since then, its date has been shifted to coincide with the annual Penguin Festival in Simon’s Town, South Africa; the town’s Boulders Beach is home to a colony of African penguins which settled there in the early 1980s and a popular tourist attraction.

On the occasion of International African Penguin Awareness Day, conservation organizations, zoos, and other stakeholders concerned with the plight of the African penguin host workshops, exhibitions, contests, and other events and activities to educate people about the African penguin, its endangered status and rapid decline in numbers.

There are many ways to celebrate International African Penguin Awareness Day. You can learn more about these amazing birds by reading a book or watching a documentary about them, check out the penguin exhibit at your local zoo, donate to a conservation organization that focuses on protecting African penguins, and share photos and videos of penguins on social media with the hashtags #InternationalAfricanPenguinAwarenessDay and #AfricanPenguinAwarenessDay to spread the word.