One of the most rare and endangered species is the yellow-eyed penguin that resides in New Zealand. This species of penguin is very shy to humans and is hard to be spotted because they are always hiding under thick shrubbery when humans approach. This penguin is the most rare and just 10 years ago the population was around 6,000; and today the population is around 2,000. One of the leading factors for this penguin to be endangered is that only 18% of the babies survive their first year of life. As we learned in Module 11 of class, the main reason for the continued trouble for the bird is caused by humans. The largest human impact is farmers are bulldozing their habitats to create areas to raise cattle and sheep. The farmers didn’t realize the damage they were doing to the penguin’s habitat. Another factor causing deaths of these penguins is cats and dogs are preying on the animals and taking out young penguins before they have a chance to grow up and reproduce. The leading cause of death for baby penguins is heat stress, which is becoming worse and worse with increasing temperatures from the global climate change.

The increasing climate change and human impacts will continue to cause problems for the yellow-eyed penguin and other animals around the world. It will be interesting to see how animals and humans adapt to the increasing concerns of endangered species.

Haenen, Marcel. “A New Zealand Penguin, Hard to Spot, Is Harder to Preserve.”The New York Times. The New York Times, 2016. Web. 17 Apr. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/science/a-new-zealand-penguin-hard-to-spot-is-harder-to-preserve.html>.