Peter Mbelengwa, Chief Director of Communications at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) said to Earthnews365 today, that the Department has not received the application as referred to in yesterday’s article (https://www.earthnews365.co.za/bird-Conservationists-take-Minister-to-court-over-African-Penguins).
Mbelengwa said the DEFF would enquire from the Biodiversity Law Centre on when they intend to serve the application.
Only once the application has been received and considered, can the DFFE comment on the merits of the matter.
BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) initiated legal action against the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy.
They want the Minister to review and set aside the closures to fishing around key African Penguin breeding colonies.
On 19 March 2024, the litigation was initiated at the Pretoria High Court, in the interests of Africa’s only penguin species: the Endangered African Penguin (Spheniscus demersus), SANCCOB, said in a statement.
The African Penguin has lost 97% of its population. If current trends persist, the species will be extinct in the wild by 2035.
The African Penguin faces extinction in the wild by 2035, if more is not done to curb the current rate of population decline.
The crisis is driven primarily by their lack of access to prey, for which they must compete with the commercial purse-seine fishery which continues to catch sardine and anchovy in the waters surrounding the six largest African Penguin breeding colonies. Critically, these six colonies are home to an estimated 90% of South Africa’s African Penguins.