Could Penguins Be the Key to Our Climate Solution?

Penguins are on the front lines of the climate war.

Transcript

00:00Penguins are on the front line of the climate war as they often hang out in the coldest places on

00:09earth places like Antarctica where many species of penguins call these giant ice sheets home

00:14homes that will literally melt away as the planet continues to get warmer which is why experts from

00:19Stony Brook University are now counting penguins hoping to track their populations because of what

00:24those numbers can tell us about our climate at large this is polar ecology researcher Michael

00:29Wetington to explain we can use penguins as a sort of bio indicator to see how the rest of the

00:35ecosystem is operating penguins conveniently come to the same nesting sites over and over and over

00:42year after year and so we have this reliable signature of you know what are how many individuals

00:49are there from one year to the next and how does this play out sort of over over decades or even

00:55longer time scales and in certain areas they have found differing results in western parts

00:59of Antarctica specifically the Weddell Sea a Delhi penguin populations have been thriving as that

01:04area is warming at a slower rate but in other areas the species has not been so lucky as ice

01:09masses have continued to decline at an alarming rate however the good news is that their numbers

01:14overall have remained stable something they say means now is the time to begin putting protections

01:19in place for the tuxedo clad climate vanguard