Kara, selected from TreeHugger From Care2

“No foxes have killed penguins in the past seven years.”

This is clever. Very clever. Sheepdogs are bred and trained to protect sheep against wolves, but that doesn’t mean that their skills can’t be used to protect different animals against other species of predators. This is exactly what the Maremma Project did on Warrnambool’s Middle Island, off the south coast of Australia. They took 2 Maremma sheepdogs, a breed originally from central Italy, and brought them to the island to protect a dwindling and seriously endangered population of Little Penguins from foxes.

The situation was dire around seven years ago when the sheepdogs were introduced: Where a colony of around 1,500 Little Penguins once thrived, only 4 breeding pairs remained. The colony was truly on the brink of extinction, at least on the island. We first wrote about this about four-and-a-half years ago, and since then things have kept improving, surpassing the expectations of pretty much everyone involved. The last census showed about 200 breeding adults, but most importantly, not one Little Penguin has been killed by a fox since their dog bodyguards landed on the island!

The Little Penguin (aka Fairy Penguin or Little Blue Penguin) is the smallest species of penguin. It only grows to about 13 inches and is found on the coastlines of southern Australia, New Zealand, with possible sightings in Chile.

For more on this story and to download the video go to:

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/sheepdogs-save-endangered-penguins-from-extinction.html