When only 6 were left, Australia deploys sheepdogs to save tiny penguins from foxes [View all]

[Liberal_in_LA]

Australia deploys sheepdogs to save tiny penguins from foxes

An Australian farmer’s simple solution to the killing off of a little penguin population became local legend and the subject of a popular film, “Oddball.”

“Massacred” read the banner headline in the local newspaper, the single word, as if describing an act of war. Below it was a photo of dead penguins and other birds, the latest casualties in Australia’s long history of imported species obliterating its native wildlife.

Foxes killed 180 penguins in that particular episode, in October 2004. But the toll on Middle Island, off Victoria State in southern Australia, kept rising. By 2005, the island’s penguin population, which had once numbered 800, was fewer than 10.


Today, the penguin population is back in the triple digits, and much of the credit has gone to a chicken farmer known as Swampy Marsh and his strong-willed sheepdogs.

“The powers that be wouldn’t listen to me until it got down to six penguins,” said Marsh, whose long-unused birth name is Allan. “They were desperate.”

http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/australia-deploys-sheepdogs-to-save-tiny-penguins-from-foxes/