In 1996, just after the Third International Penguin Conference, a Conservation Assessment and Management Plan (CAMP) workshop for Penguins was conducted by the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. This workshop facilitated a substantive review and updating of an earlier Penguin CAMP document, produced in 1992. Thirty-seven people from 10 countries participated in the 2-day event, during which 24 penguin taxa were evaluated on a taxon-by-taxon basis in terms of their current and projected status in the wild. Each taxon was assigned a new IUCN Red List Category of Threat, and priorities were set for conservation action (Ellis et al. 1998).
The results of the workshop were startling and alarming. Of all the penguin species, only those in the Antarctic do not seem to be facing grave, documented declines or other problems that put them at serious risk. Whereas the 1996 IUCN Red List considered only five penguin species to be threatened, penguin biologists at the 1996 workshop considered 11 taxa (9 species) to fall under one of the IUCN Categories of Threat and two as Near Threatened.
As part of the follow-up on recommendations emanating from the CAMP, a Population and Habitat Viability Assessment (PHVA) was conducted for the Humboldt penguin in Chile in October 1998 (Araya et al. 1999), and a PHVA for the African penguin in early 1999 (Whittington et al. 2000). Both species face severe but different threats that put their populations at risk of extinction. Of particular importance, these workshops provided a venue where biologists and other experts were able to share open and honest dialogue as they searched for mutually viable and acceptable strategies for the successful management of the species, with the ultimate aim of developing management plans that would lead to species recovery.
Participants at the two PHVA workshops suggested a fourth penguin workshop, to address the commonalties among all four Spheniscus species (Humboldt, African, Galápagos and Magellanic) and to develop a collaborative conservation strategy for the group as a whole.
