Penguins may be free of killer banding
Banding of fairy penguins is likely to be prohibited by the Australian government following growing evidence that this practice kills the very animals it's supposed to monitor.
The federal government's Department of the Environment and Heritage told the ABC that new projects involving flipper banding may not be approved.
"Certainly the department has been very concerned," said Anne-Marie Delahunt, assistant director of the department's wildlife conservation branch.
The department's decision depends on the outcome of research it commissioned to assess the impact of banding on fairy penguins, which are also known as little penguins.
"At the moment we have a moratorium on doing any further banding on penguins. Depending on the nature of [the commissioned research] we would be quite likely to continue that moratorium," said Delahunt.
The scientist in charge of the research, Dr Peter Dann of Victoria's Phillip Island Nature Park, said he had found that flipper banding affected the birds' survival.
Dann said his five-year study found that birds with bands were significantly less likely to be recaptured after release than birds with injected transponders, a type of electronic tag.
"It's obvious that it's not good for the penguins' survival," he said. "I don't think it's a good idea."
The findings support French-led research released last week that found banding affected the survival and reproduction of king penguins, a larger penguin than the fairy penguin.
Dann said in Australia, king penguins were only found on Heard Island, an island 4000 kilometres south-west of Perth, on the way to Antarctica.
According to the environment department, no penguin banding takes place there.
"We've shown exactly the same kind of trend as the French research that there is some detrimental effect of using flipper bands on penguins so we stopped using them," Dann said.
Bands had some advantages over transponders, Dann said. Because bands carried an address people who found banded dead penguins could contact researchers and provide them with valuable information on where penguins were dying, when and sometimes how.
"That's a shame but we'll just have to use other methods to find those things out," said Dann.
He said some researchers were looking at making bands from soft plastic that would have less impact on penguins.