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Can’t Take the Heat
Photograph by Maria Stenzel
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Hard-wired to return to the same breeding site year after year, Adélie penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula’s Litchfield Island find themselves in thin company as the climate becomes inhospitably warm. With winter temperatures on the peninsula up 10°F over the past half century, Adélies are having an increasingly difficult time finding krill, which begin their life cycles in sea ice. To make matters worse, increased snowfall here interferes with nesting. This colony, down from 1,000 breeding pairs in 1974 to 230 today, may not survive the next five years.
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