Chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island in Antarctica down by two-thirds since 2011, probably due to climate crisis The world’s largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis, a study has revealed. Scientists said the rapid demise of chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica, increased the risk of a wider ecosystem collapse. “It is an enormous population crash, equivalent to half a million breeding individuals being lost from that island,” said the leader of the research, Prof Norman Ratcliffe, a penguin ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey. The Guardian revealed in 2020 that chinstrap penguin populations were decreasing on Low in the South Shetland Islands, prompting concerns among scientists that “something is broken” in the world’s wildest ecosystem. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/07/penguin-colony-population-crash-zavodovski-island-antarctica #ClimateChange