News

West Coast New Zealand penguin fossil discoveries tell us about penguin evolution

After four little penguins or kororā killed north of Greymouth

After four little penguins or kororā were killed in quick succession in recent weeks between Greymouth and Barrytown, media interest in the reasons why and what was being done on the West Coast was high. Looking at the kororā mortality records, no penguins had been killed in those areas, Thirteen Mile and Seventeen Mile north of Greymouth, since 2017.  It seems likely that two pairs have decided to nest on the 'wrong' side of the road and all four birds have been tragically been killed at the start of the breeding season. Our thoughts immediately turned to the need for penguin protection fencing, but in fact there are few penguins in this area.  West Coast little penguin mortality records show that one was killed at Seventeen mile in 2011, and one each at Fourteen Mile in 2011, 2014 and 2017, with three more killed a little further south in 2011, 2017 and 2020. With an invitation to speak on RNZ National Morning Report, trust manager Inger Perkins went over the mortality data and was able to illustrate the value of penguin fences where they have been constructed. Penguin fences at and north of Punakaiki as well as on the north side of Hokitika have reduced the little penguin death toll on the roads from 21 a year to 6 a year.  Our current concern is for the Fox River area further north, although fencing there will be very challenging.

The stats also showed that, in the first few years of records being collected by the trust, from 2006, the number of little penguin deaths definitely or presumed to have been caused by loose dogs has dropped from an average of seven a year to three in recent years.   That's still three too many, three each year that are entirely avoidable, but it is progress. These two causes of kororā death remain a major concern across the region but it is clear that the efforts of the West Coast Penguin Trust, whether building and maintaining penguin protection fences, or our education and awareness campaigns about the risk of loose dogs (to themselves and to ground nesting birds like penguins) is working. The brief interview on RNZ is here: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019002802/fears-for-korora-population-after-two-killed-on-road Stuff news story here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360812134/two-pairs-korora-killed-west-coast-road-one-month The trust has compiled the spatial data of little penguin mortality and shared it with DOC and councils.  The sad statistics illustrate where penguins are and where they are dying with the total number of dead little penguins reported since records began in 2006 now at around a horribly large 500.

In the constant hustle of work, it can be easy to overlook saying thank you

From small beginnings to National Advocacy: Protecting New Zealand’s threatened Sea Birds

September 2025 Back in February, the International Congress of Zookeepers (ICZ), held their triennial congress in Wellington.  Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo Chief Executive, Karen Fifield MNZM, has been President of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) for the past two years and was instrumental in bringing the ICZ Congress to Wellington. The West Coast Penguin Trust has been honoured to be a Conservation Partner of Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo for over eight years.  It was a further honour when manager, Inger Perkins, was invited to be a speaker at the ICZ Congress.  The title of the conference was "Me tiaki, kia ora! We must look after our environment so all life will flourish", which was fitted perfectly with the trust's work. From small beginnings to National Advocacy: Protecting New Zealand’s threatened Sea Birds Speaking on Valentine's Day, Inger introduced the trust's love for penguins, its history and its work with a special focus on the two West Coast penguins and the Westland petrel.  Congress participants were able to see the little penguin or kororā in the 'meet the locals' section of Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo.  She acknowledged the invaluable and much valued relationship with the Wellington Zoo Trust, Te Nukuao Tūroa o Te Whanganui a Tara.

"I wanted to emphasise the value of that partnership and to encourage zoos around the world to connect to and support community conservation organisations like ours.  In addition, I demonstrated that zoos can play an important role in awareness of conservation issues to their visitors, especially where there may be opportunities to encourage changed behaviours that will result in better outcomes for threatened species.  Such actions may be keeping dogs safe and secure at home where home is close to those species.  Actions could be broader such as minimising the risk of plastic entering our oceans. And of course, securing funding and donations is a constant!"

Using a classic Dr Seuss quote, Inger appealed to the zookeepers to find a way to get visitors to care "a whole awful lot".  Having studied Conservation Psychology, she explained that it is "is the study of reciprocal relationships between humans and the rest of nature with a particular focus on how to encourage conservation of the natural world". The opportunity for zoos and aquaria to motivate conservation is huge and Inger had seen this done brilliantly while travelling in the US throughout the Monterey Aquarium. "There was an interactive pretend real cost café with video responses to your food choices explaining the impact on the environment and better choices, incredible art works made from litter and messaging encouraging readers to help keep plastic out of the sea, to choose ocean-safe products, and illustrating how the aquarium walks the talk." Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo also works hard to raise awareness of issues and encourage responsible behaviours, whether relating to  managing waste or dog ownership, including their 'Save our kororā - Take the lead' campaign. The support from the ICZ to include Inger at the conference to share the trust's story and encourage zookeepers to take on this awareness role was very much appreciated.  The ICZ also raised donations for the trust's work through the registration process, which was a wonderful surprise.  

Penguin detection dog Miro in action on the Coast

September 2025 Conservation dog handler Joanna Sim was on the Coast recently with her dog Miro.  They were here to search for penguins in coastal areas at the request of current and potential mining operations as part of resource consent processes.  While Jo and Miro were here, we were fortunate that they could fit in some survey work for the Trust at Cape Foulwind, Punakaiki and Hokitika.  Ranger Lucy Waller and Manager Inger Perkins were privileged to join them both while searching on the coast side of the Westland Milk Products Penguin Protection Fence at Hokitika.

The Hokitika area has been a stronghold for little penguins or kororā no doubt for thousands if not millions of years before humans arrived.  During penguin counts immediately north of Hokitika around 15 years ago, the number of fresh tracks heading out to sea could be over 100.  That could mean perhaps 40-50 breeding pairs nesting in the narrow strip of scrubby vegetation between paddocks, rugby grounds and sewage ponds and the beach. Before the Hokitika penguin protection fence was constructed in 2021, penguins were occasionally trying to find nesting sites on the wrong side of state highway 6 and a number were killed on the road.  Access for penguins has been impacted by erosion in recent years and that seems to have driven some away despite efforts to cut and maintain ramps for access up the erosion face.  Another impact on this dispersed penguin colony has been loose dogs, with nine reported likely to have been killed by a dog between 2009 and 2015.  And then there's the changing climate, for example illustrated by the marine heat wave in summer 2021-22.  We know the warmer water made feeding, breeding and survival extremely difficult for little penguins. But kororā are hanging on and Jo and her energetic and obedient dog Miro identified sixteen definite or highly likely nest sites during the Hokitika survey at the end of July.  There may be more but gorse, rabbits and weka can confuse things no matter how clever the dog!  Miro also found six sites at the north end of Tauranga Bay, Cape Foulwind.  Despite Lucy finding three nests at Punakaiki River mouth last season, she and Jo and Miro had no success there on this occasion.

Surveying for penguins is a laborious process.  Miro has been trained for up to two years for this work and he takes his time to check carefully and comprehensively, with Jo close by.  If Miro is certain of a penguin's presence, he will return to Jo to encourage her to follow further into the scrubby vegetation to confirm.  There is plenty of gorse and blackberry here, not a dog or human's best friend, but here it can protect penguin nests as dogs are not keen to push past the prickles. Here's a brief video showing the images as a camera is inserted into a hole identified by Miro as a penguin nest site.  He was right! https://vimeo.com/1118960531?share=copy#t=0 Most of Jo and Miro's last survey day on the Coast was spent at Hokitika covering a painstaking 1.8km.  With so many pressures on little penguins, we are very pleased that penguins have been confirmed along this stretch of coast and that they are protected from the highway by our Westland Milk Products penguin protection fence.  It seems that dog lovers are also penguin lovers with no penguins reported to have been killed in this area for ten years.  We hope that record continues and we are extremely grateful to Westland Milk Products for their ongoing support of our penguin conservation efforts.

WCPT Annual Report shows progress and resilience

September 2025 This year, the West Coast Penguin Trust has released both a colourful summary and the usual Annual Report for 2024-25.  They are full of news about the trust's projects, from field work to fundraising, foraging to fencing, and covering research, education, awareness and advocacy. Our Vision remains "Sea and shore birds and their habitat of the West Coast Te Tai Poutini are healthy and thriving" and we have reviewed our field work programme to ensure it is fit for purpose and this vision.  Combining and analysing our breeding success data with information about individual penguins through microchipping and then adding foraging study results gives us greater insight and understanding of the little penguins / kororā at the study site in Camerons, Greymouth.  These findings will be related to marine parameters including sea surface temperature and nutrient availability, and potentially to our changing climate. We believe this work is important and lies at the heart of the trust's operation.  From there, our findings feed into the other areas of the trust's work. Find out more and the key features of our work during the year to March 2025 in our annual report. 2024-25 West Coast Penguin Trust Annual Report 2024-25 WCPT Summary Annual Report  

Keeping dogs safe to keep penguins safe

Conservation psychology  is the study of how human behavior influences and is influenced by the natural environment.  The goal is to promote sustainable practices and foster a positive relationship between humans and nature. Social science research tells us that awareness of an issue rarely results in behaviour change. So we need a new approach to our sadly repetitive messages that encourage close control of dogs. With the help of animal control officers at Buller, Grey and Westland District Councils, we are sharing a new flier in the coming weeks, during and beyond the next dog registration process. Four times over the past 12 years or so, we have been fortunate to include a flier with dog registration notices.  There is a gradual shift to electronic notices so things are changing but we hope dog owners will see this new message. This time, instead of making it all about the penguins, we're making it all about the dog.  What is most important to a dog owner - their dog or a penguin?  Easy - it's their dog! Dogs are at risk from a variety of directions when they escape from their home and yard.  It could be traffic, it could be poisons, it could be other dogs or wildlife that may be aggressive, it could even be theft.  There is a risk of a pound fee or even restrictions if a dog is deemed to be dangerous. This flier encourages dog owners to keep dogs safe and secure at home, safely out of trouble. It's hard to keep a property securely fenced with a determined pooch, but the benefit for the dog and the dog's family is enormous, (not to mention the penguins).

Penguin Talks in Hokitika - Wednesday 25th June

Penguin talks are back!  5.30pm, Wednesday 25th June, Westland District Library, Hokitika.  After an introduction to the Trust and our work, Tawaki Ranger, Catherine Stewart will share video clips, photos and insights from 11 years of monitoring Fiordland crested penguins or tawaki in one of the remotest spots in New Zealand, Gorge River in deepest South Westland. Catherine presented her findings at the recent biennial Oamaru Penguin Symposium and has expanded the 15 minute presentation to share with anyone interested in these handsome and rarely seen penguins.  Catherine's daughter, Robin Long, began the monitoring in 2014 and went on to become a Trustee and then Chair of the West Coast Penguin Trust.  As she moved on to survey tawaki in other remote areas including Stewart Island Rakiura, complete a Diploma then Masters in wildlife studies, and travel overseas, Catherine took on the mantle of tawaki ranger. Installing and maintaining trail cameras and checking on the colony with minimal disturbance a few times during the season, we are learning more about tawaki.  The intention of monitoring initially was to learn whether there was predation and if so by what.  We have discovered so much more! Come along to the library in Hokitika to find out about these West Coast penguins.

That's the 2024 kororā penguin season wrapped up! Report from Ranger, Lucy Waller

Report from West Coast Penguin Trust Ranger, Lucy Waller The West Coast Penguin Trust has spent the last 19 years monitoring kororā / little penguin colonies at several sites with a main focus on the Charleston area. Some colonies have been completely natural, remote colonies that we have to climb hills and bush bash our way to reach, and some are simply next to a road. Some are natural burrows in rocky caves, under tree roots, in holes in the ground and some are man-made nest boxes placed in locations where shelter may be limited to protect the penguins when breeding, moulting, hanging out; some are a mixture of both. My days, sometimes shared with volunteers, are spent searching for existing burrows and finding new ones and new signs of penguin activity, using our senses and burrowscopes, torches and cameras, sometimes an occasional phone is used when nothing else seems to work. Images on the burrowscope can be challenging, particularly when it's really wet and muddy, and each time the scope goes into the long, natural, muddy burrow, the camera gets covered in wet mud! Or when the birds hear you coming and then move to the very back and round the corner beyond more tree roots! We monitored our original six Buller sites for the 2024 season, our study site in the Grey area and a few individual sites that we checked around the Punakaiki area. For nearly 20 years, Charleston and the Nile River area has been our main study site, but this year we moved it to Camerons Beach and started creating a fresh data set. Our Buller sites are mainly natural burrows to burrowscope, with the exception of one private study site still being monitored fortnightly.  Cameron's Beach is 100% nest box nesting, which makes monitoring much easier but also much more accurate. The natural burrow colonies further north, including the Nile River site, did not do so well as previous years this season. With only two checks in the season for these colonies, data is very limited, giving us an indication of presence and breeding success. Results were similar to the last couple of years, which were also quiet. There were no apparent signs of predation on our visits, one dead penguin was found on eggs at one colony sadly, but a very quiet season for those natural burrows colonies this year. This was our first season that we have not carried out fortnightly checks of the Nile River colony and it seemed to be a rather quiet season there, but we cannot confirm breeding attempts, whether they failed or how many chicks fledged, with just two checks. It has been quiet there for a few seasons, and possibly linked to El Niño weather patterns and marine heat waves. We will do further checks this year to see what the story is for 2025. However, at our neighboring Charleston colony where penguins are in nest boxes, the breeding success rate (chicks fledged/eggs laid) was 72.5%, in comparison to last year's 83.3%, but the two years before being much much lower in the 30 & 40 % region. We definitely need to keep an eye on this area and learn more about the impact of changing marine conditions. We had a very promising start to our little Punakaiki colony this season, having found a very empty colony the last few years. On our first visit in mid October, we found 3 adults sitting tight on eggs and got very excited! Unfortunately by our second visit, 2 nests had failed, one simply empty and one with abandoned eggs. We did have one successful fledged nest with 2 chicks however. There was also a report by the Westland Petrel Patrol team of a penguin chick running around on the highway, under the street lamps there one night. It wasn't seen again, so we hope it found its way home. But this does show there are penguins trying to nest in that area. We plan to do more checks this season of a broader area and we are also fortunate enough to have a penguin detection dog coming to visit who can help us with this. So we are watching this space this upcoming season! 2024 was the first year we microchipped penguins at Camerons Beach. The plan was to microchip as many adults and chicks as we could, however, some penguins were not accessible in burrows only accessible by a burrowscope and a few adults eluded us all season. A total of 24 adults and 23 chicks have been tagged so far and we hope to catch the others this coming season. What this means for us is we are now able to tell who is there, who is returning, who doesn't, if and when chicks return and answer other questions, such as, is that a double clutch? Is that a second attempt of laying eggs from the same pair in the same season? If any dead penguins are now found on the beach at Camerons we should be able to identify the penguin and know from the exact nest it comes from. Sadly this has already been relevant, as a dead penguin was found at the entrance to the beach a couple of weeks ago (news story here), but frustratingly we didn't manage to scan it, so we don't know who it was. However, in the next coming weeks, when monitoring starts again, it will probably become apparent.  I hope you don't find a dead penguin, but if you do, please do report it to us on this form and, if it's at all practical, move the penguin out of sight and out of the range of the tide in case we need to find it again.  Thank you. Not a nice way to start the season, but a crucial reminder to keep all dogs under close control, never too far ahead and never out of sight, so they won't have time to pick out a penguin hanging out on the beach or in the bushes. And also for vehicles on the beach, please pay attention for these little ones when driving. They only stand 30 cm tall and mostly hop around the beach at dusk and dawn or after dark, when it's difficult to see them. On a more positive note, we had 22 active (meaning penguin presence) nest boxes, with 21 of those actually breeding. 90.5 % of the nest boxes fledged with approximately 26-30 chicks fledging. Interestingly, in all but five nests, eggs were laid within the same three-day period.  One nest just had a regular visiting adult throughout the season and a moulting penguin after that, no breeding - perhaps it had lost its mate. For the other four nests: eggs were laid two weeks before the rest in one nest, and in the other three eggs were laid at a similar time to each other, very late in the season. As this is our first year monitoring this site officially, we cannot compare it to previous years, so we will see what happens this coming season. However, there are more than 64 nest boxes scattered around the site and so the potential for a growing colony is there. Fingers crossed! We ask everybody to please be vigilant when using the beach from now on, with dogs, cars, and yourselves, as penguin season is starting. The penguins are finding their mates and building nests.  Within the next couple of months or so, they will be starting to lay eggs. We ask you to please stay away from any nest boxes you might come across and do not disturb them. When we have to monitor them, we do so very quickly, silently and with minimal disturbance. If we don't have to open the box, we won't and we use camera traps and other signs too to monitor them.  We know when to disturb and when not to, studying their patterns and previous data. Some are very susceptible to noise and disturbance, which could disrupt their chances of breeding this season. Please help us to protect these beautiful and very important sentinel species for our coastal environment and seas. Plus.... it is incredibly special to be living so close to the world's smallest penguin. Quite a responsibility and a privilege to protect them! Thank you West Coast Penguin Trust Ranger, Lucy Waller

A sorry start to the penguin season at Camerons Beach - a reminder to all of us to stay vigilant with our dogs

A dead penguin was sadly found last week at Camerons Beach, near the entrance from Pandora Avenue. It gives us a very unpleasant reminder to raise more awareness for the upcoming penguin season and for everyone to please keep dogs under control whilst anywhere near any beach.  People may be inclined to think it's only one bird out of many, but this just simply isn't true for us over on the West Coast and our kororā. With only approximately 22 breeding pairs of little penguins at Camerons Beach, and this being one of the largest colonies on the West Coast, this dead penguin found last week was a very sad sight and one which will have a knock on effect to the numbers at this colony. Unfortunately this penguin was not picked up so we couldn't scan it for a microchip to identify it.  We have microchipped the majority of the birds at this colony last year and so, for the first time in this location, we will be able to see who didn't come home for the breeding season and whose partner will be waiting for them to return. Last season, we had between 26 and 30 chicks fledge from the colony at Camerons Beach and we hope, with raised awareness and protection, this number will rise. Please keep our kororā colony safe this winter by keeping your dogs under control so they never meet a penguin (or any wildlife) on the beach or in the bushes without you being able to call them back. Thank you for your help and support. Lucy Waller, Ranger, West Coast Penguin Trust