Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Centro de Investigaciones Puerto Deseado, Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral, Rio Gallegos, Argentina; CONICET, Santa Cruz, Argentina; Wildlife Conservation Society, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2023 Aug;193:115195. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115195. Epub 2023 Jun 23.
A goal for conservation biologists is to show that policies enacted on behalf of an imperiled species results in direct benefits for it. In Argentina, tens of thousands of Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) were estimated to have died from chronic oil pollution each year through the early 1980s. From 1982 to 1990, surveys at sites along approximately 900 km of Chubut Province coastline found that >60 % of penguin carcasses had evidence of oiling in some years. In response to these findings, as well as pressure from non-governmental organizations and the public, provincial and federal authorities in Chubut moved the commercial tanker lanes 20 nautical miles farther offshore in 1997 and required oil tankers to have double hulls. During a second round of surveys in 2001, using most of the same sites as the first survey period, the number of dead and oiled penguins dropped effectively to zero. A policy change not only led to fewer oiled penguins, but also likely increased the survival of adult Magellanic penguins near some of their most significant breeding colonies in Argentina.
保护生物学家的目标是表明，为濒危物种制定的政策会直接为其带来益处。在阿根廷，据估计，20 世纪 80 年代初，每年有数千只麦哲伦企鹅（Spheniscus magellanicus）因慢性石油污染而死亡。1982 年至 1990 年，在丘布特省沿海约 900 公里的多个地点进行的调查发现，有些年份超过 60%的企鹅尸体有被油污染的迹象。针对这些发现，以及非政府组织和公众的压力，丘布特省和联邦当局于 1997 年将商业油轮航道向海上推进了 20 海里，并要求油轮采用双壳船体。在 2001 年进行的第二轮调查中，研究人员使用了与第一轮调查相同的大部分地点，死亡和被油污染的企鹅数量实际上已降至零。政策的改变不仅减少了被油污染的企鹅数量，而且可能还提高了阿根廷一些最重要的繁殖地附近成年麦哲伦企鹅的存活率。
