- The Humboldt Penguin lives along the coasts of Chile and Peru in the southeastern Pacific Ocean in an ecosystem highly influenced by the cold, nutrient-rich Humboldt Current, flowing northwards from Antarctica.
- The current is vital to the productivity of plankton and krill, organisms which form the basis of the marine food web.
- In the mid-19th century, there were over one million Humboldt Penguins. Decades of mining guano deposits used for agricultural fertilizer from penguin nesting locations on isolated rocky outcrops caused disastrous declines of the Humboldt Penguin, which prefers to nest in burrows dug into guano deposits.
- The guano mining was largely abated and the Humboldt Penguin appeared to be recovering through the middle of the 20th century from this early threat.
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