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‘Adopt a Penguin Egg’ Easter Campaign Helps Endangered African Birds

A penguin carer feeds a chick at South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds rehabilitation center, where the center has been incubating over 200 eggs of the endangered African penguin that were rescued from two penguin colonies, since the start of the year and they are soliciting donations by inviting people to "adopt an egg", in Cape Town, South Africa, March 27, 2024. (Reuters)
A penguin carer feeds a chick at South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds rehabilitation center, where the center has been incubating over 200 eggs of the endangered African penguin that were rescued from two penguin colonies, since the start of the year and they are soliciting donations by inviting people to "adopt an egg", in Cape Town, South Africa, March 27, 2024. (Reuters)
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‘Adopt a Penguin Egg’ Easter Campaign Helps Endangered African Birds

A penguin carer feeds a chick at South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds rehabilitation center, where the center has been incubating over 200 eggs of the endangered African penguin that were rescued from two penguin colonies, since the start of the year and they are soliciting donations by inviting people to "adopt an egg", in Cape Town, South Africa, March 27, 2024. (Reuters)
A penguin carer feeds a chick at South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds rehabilitation center, where the center has been incubating over 200 eggs of the endangered African penguin that were rescued from two penguin colonies, since the start of the year and they are soliciting donations by inviting people to "adopt an egg", in Cape Town, South Africa, March 27, 2024. (Reuters)

Bored of buying eggs made of chocolate and wrapped in foil with predictable bunny motifs? This Easter in South Africa you could instead spend your cash an egg that will hatch a live penguin.

But these ones are not for taking home.

Since the start of the year, a South African conservation group has been incubating over 200 eggs of the endangered African penguin that were previously rescued from two colonies.

The Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) is soliciting donations to meet the cost of incubating them by inviting people to "adopt an egg."

The African penguin -- the only species that breeds on the continent, and which is also found in Namibia -- was once South Africa's most abundant seabird.

No longer. The population has plunged to less than 10,000 breeding pairs in 2024, according to SANCCOB resources manager, Ronnis Daniels, meaning there is only 1% left of the 1 million that were in existence a century earlier.

"At the current trajectory, which is an 8% loss every year, we are looking at extinction by 2035," she told Reuters. "There won't be enough (for) the wild population to save itself."

Threats to the birds are legion, but the main culprit is commercial fishing, which has ravaged stocks of sardines and anchovies that the penguins depend on to live.

"That would be the top of the list," Daniels said. "The sad part is that fish is exported mostly as fishmeal."

Other threats include all the noise and pollution from the shipping routes around South Africa, especially when the ships stop to refuel in Algoa bay, she said.

On one day, volunteer Nicky Shadbolt was walking along an enclosure for the downy baby penguins.

"Over this time, when everybody is also thinking about chocolates and fluffy bunnies, we would like you ... to adopt a penguin egg," she said, punctuated by baby penguin squeaks.

"It is really expensive for us to raise that little penguin from egg or all the way to maturity," she added, a process that takes four months until they are released back into the wild.

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Tourist Coins Pose Giant Problem at N. Ireland's Famous Causeway Site

Tourists are pictured at the Giant's Causeway, a Unesco World Heritage Site, near Bushmills in Northern Ireland, on July 8, 2025. (Photo by PAUL FAITH / AFP)
Tourists are pictured at the Giant's Causeway, a Unesco World Heritage Site, near Bushmills in Northern Ireland, on July 8, 2025. (Photo by PAUL FAITH / AFP)
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Tourist Coins Pose Giant Problem at N. Ireland's Famous Causeway Site

Tourists are pictured at the Giant's Causeway, a Unesco World Heritage Site, near Bushmills in Northern Ireland, on July 8, 2025. (Photo by PAUL FAITH / AFP)
Tourists are pictured at the Giant's Causeway, a Unesco World Heritage Site, near Bushmills in Northern Ireland, on July 8, 2025. (Photo by PAUL FAITH / AFP)

Northern Ireland's Giant Causeway draws close to one million visitors a year but their habit of wedging tiny coins in cracks between the rocks -- to bring love or luck -- is damaging the world-famous wonder.

Now authorities are urging tourists to keep their coins in their pockets to preserve the spectacular landscape.

Some 40,000 columns mark the causeway, Northern Ireland's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Geologists say the natural phenomenon was created by an outpouring of basalt lava 60 million years ago.

Legend has it that the causeway was formed by Irish giant Finn McCool.

In recent decades, visitors have pushed thousands of coins into fissures in the rocks.

The gesture is "a token of love or luck", according to Cliff Henry, the causeway's nature engagement officer.

But the coins rapidly corrode and expand, causing the basalt to flake and leaving "unsightly" rust-colored streaks, Henry told AFP.

He pointed to streaks on a rock and gingerly prized out a US cent with a set of keys.

"We get a lot of euros and dollar cents. But coins from literally all over the world -- any currency you can think of, pretty much -- we have had it here," he said.

A report by the British Geological Survey in 2021 revealed that the coins were "doing some serious damage" and something had to be done about it, he noted.

Signs are now in place around the site appealing to tourists to "leave no trace".
"Once some visitors see other people have done it, they feel that they need to add to it," causeway tour guide Joan Kennedy told AFP.

She and her colleagues now gently but firmly tell tourists to desist.

At the exit from the causeway, a US couple said they were "distressed" to hear of the damage the metal caused.

"Our guide mentioned as we came up that people had been putting coins into the stones. It's really terrible to hear that," said Robert Lewis, a 75-year-old from Florida.

"It's kind of like damaging any kind of nature when you are doing something like that, putting something foreign into nature. It's not good," said his wife, Geri, 70.

As part of a £30,000 ($40,000) conservation project, stone masons recently removed as many coins as they could -- without causing further damage -- from 10 test sites around the causeway.

Henry said the trial was successful and is to be expanded across the causeway.

"If we can get all those coins removed to start with that will help the situation and hopefully no more coins will be put in," he said.

"If visitors see fewer coins in the stones and hear appeals to stop the damaging practice, the problem can maybe be solved.

"We know that visitors love and cherish the Giant's Causeway, and many form deep personal connections to it, so we want this natural wonder to remain special for future generations."