Featured article

Greetings from Penguin-Land, Ranger Rick magazine

Gentoo penguins, with their distinctive white feather ‘cap’ and bright orange bill, are one of the most charismatic and well-known species of penguins.  There are 387,000 breeding pairs globally, with the largest populations just east of South America in the Falkland Islands (121,500 pairs).

In the past few decades, however, gentoos have increasingly expanded their range southward into the West Antarctic Peninsula.  Scientists have correlated this population boom (which they jokingly refer to as “gentoofication”) with rapid changes in the Antarctic Peninsula’s environment.