Emperor penguins may be marching to extinction

A PENGUIN species made famous by Hollywood is heading towards extinction, scientists warned yesterday.

Emperor penguins could be on the verge of being wiped out before the end of the century, according to researchers in America.

The species, immortalised in the 2005 film March of the Penguins, is under threat because of climate change.

If rising temperatures continue to melt sea ice at current rates, the population size of a large Emperor penguin colony in Terre Adelie, Antarctica, will shrink from 3,000 to only 400 breeding pairs, a paper by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, claims.

The grim predictions were based on evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).