More than a dozen species of penguins are sprinkled throughout the southern hemisphere. Many of them are in trouble - victims of overfishing, habitat loss and climate change. In South Africa, the situation is so severe that conservation groups are taking drastic steps to save one species. Terry FitzPatrick brings us the story from Cape Town.

Photos: Terry FitzPatrick

FitzPatrick: It's breakfast time at SANCCOB, the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds in Cape Town. 62 juvenile African penguins waddle out of shallow pools. This hospital was built in the 1960s to heal injured birds. Now it's also an orphanage for abandoned penguin chicks.

Strauss: "You see these birds come in and they're basically just a breadth of wind. There's no body fat to them, they're just skinny. It's quite sad."

Venessa StraussFitzPatrick: Venessa Strauss is a veterinary nurse who rounds-up the weakest chicks each year from breeding islands not far offshore.

Strauss: "The problem African penguins face in the wild when they have to raise two chicks really is a shortage of food. So what often happens is they can't feed the birds enough and so your weaker chick will slowly fade away."

FitzPatrick: Staffers shoot electrolyte solution down the chicks throats with a feeding tube and a large syringe. The team is nursing them back to health. The youngest chicks eat ground-up fish. At two months old, they're eating eight whole sardines per day.

FitzPatrick: It takes about three months for a fuzzy chick to mature to a point where it can forage for itself at sea. Each week, vets in rubber coveralls check if these orphans have grown the waterproof feathers they need to survive in the wild.

Strauss: "The birds were just forced to swim now, some for 20 minutes, some for an hour. So we pick up each bird, they get weighed, and we lift up the feathers over the whole body and we look if the down is dry. If they're not dry, they will not swim and they will not survive."

African penguinFitzPatrick: There used to be millions of penguins along Africa's southern coast. But only 100,000 are left and the population is dropping fast. It's listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. One of the biggest problems is a dwindling food supply. Penguins have to compete for sardines and anchovies these days with commercial fishing fleets. But Robert Crawford, the South African government's top penguin biologist says closing the coast to fishing would be costly and controversial.

Crawford: "There's a lot of jobs involved, a lot of fishing plants. We're not looking at closing the entire fishery, but we're looking at adjusting the catch to account for penguin and other predators in the ecosystem."

FitzPatrick: In the meantime, Crawford says efforts to save starving chicks can help hold the line.

Crawford: "I think it's got to that stage where every management intervention that will have benefits to the species has to be taken."

FitzPatrick: Another major threat to penguin survival is habitat destruction. And here too, conservationists are taking emergency measures.

Chivell: "You can see it's impossible for any bird to make a nest in this area-boulders upon boulder upon boulder."

African penguin colony at Dyer Island

FitzPatrick: This is Dyer Island, once prime penguin habitat. But local resident Wilfred Chivell says people have removed all the topsoil because it's rich in bird droppings, and made good fertilizer. All that's left are rocks. Penguins can't dig a natural underground nest, where it's safe and cool. They must breed in the open, where many of their chicks die. That's why Chivell is installing small fiberglass igloos for the penguins to use as nests.

Chivell inspecting fiberglass igloosChivell: "I think they thought we're a little bit mad trying to put houses out for penguins. But nesting is definitely one of the things they needed. And it's an easy thing to do."

FitzPatrick: Chivell is a charter boat captain who's formed the Dyer Island Conservation Trust to protect the birds. So far he's installed 800 nests. It isn't a permanent solution, and the nesting site problem extends throughout the penguins' range in southern Africa. But the igloos are durable and penguins re-use them every year when its time to mate.

Chivell: "Once you've placed the nest there, they decorate. They put a few extra stones and a few feathers and pieces of the native vegetation here. So they make it nice and homely for themselves."

Nesting igloos

FitzPatrick: As Chivell digs, Sunette Ferreira and a team from SANCCOB have come to the island with ten cardboard boxes.

Ferreira: "What we're going to do here is release the penguins. We try to release them at the same time so they form a little group. So this is the first time they would see the actual beach since they were chicks. So it's all new. That's why they're going to try to huddle together to get some confidence. And once they feel ready they will move down to the beach."

Returning orphaned African penguins to the wild

FitzPatrick: As Ferreira opens the boxes, 27 chicks from the orphanage resume their lives in the wild. Penguins don't need fishing lessons from their parents. And within five minutes, these orphans have rejoined their cousins on the shoreline.

Ferreira: "See there's already one going for the water. It's amazing how quickly instinct will kick in."

FitzPatrick: In three years, SANCCOB has rescued nearly 1400 penguin chicks. They don't all survive, but studies have shown that many do. And with a species that's collapsing, scientists say every chick counts.

For The World, I'm Terry FitzPatrick on Dyer Island near Cape Town South Africa.