Evacuation set for world's largest African penguin colony

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The world's largest colony of African penguins will be evacuated from an island off South Africa's west coast to save the birds from an oil spill, conservation officials said Saturday.

Between 3,000 and 6,000 penguins are to be evacuated Sunday, said Onkgopotse Thabane, spokesman for the environmental affairs department. In the largest operation of its kind, the birds will be rounded up from a nature reserve on Dassen Island, placed in ventilated boxes, shipped to the mainland and trucked about 560 miles down the coast, where they will be released.

The penguins are expected to swim home in about 11 days. Authorities hope that will be enough time to clean up the spill from the Panamanian-registered tanker Treasure, which sank near Cape Town on June 23 while carrying 1,300 tons of oil.

Conservation officials and volunteers are also struggling to feed and clean some 11,000 oily penguins captured on Robben Island, four miles off Cape Town's coast, which was badly hit by the slick.

Authorities had hoped that a change in wind direction Friday would mean the evacuation of the Dassen Island birds could be avoided: Oil spilled from the Treasure was moving away from island, home to about 55,000 African penguins.

But more oil appeared to have leaked from the wreck overnight. And oil still covered the birds' feeding waters near the island, located about 35 miles northwest of Cape Town, conservation officials said.

''The evacuation is set to go ahead. The latest reports show a 36-square-kilometer (22-square-mile) patch of oil between the wreck of the Treasure and Dassen Island,'' said Aletta Jordaan, spokeswoman for Western Cape Nature Conservation.

The evacuation effort will take several days, and it's unclear how many of the island's birds can be rescued. Most of the chicks and unhatched eggs are likely to be lost, authorities say.

Preparations for an evacuation have been underway since Friday, with volunteers fencing off three bays to prevent the penguins from going into the sea to fish.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare has mobilized a team of bird experts to help manage the disaster, and has paid more than $50,000 for bird rehabilitation, said Sarah Scarth, director of the fund's emergency relief program.

''It is a catastrophe - it's like handling a refugee situation,'' she said. ''This operation is going to go on for at least two months.''

Once a bird has been cleaned, it needs to be cared for in a rehabilitation center for about a month.

The oil slick has made its way onto three of Cape Town's most popular beaches and several others were at risk, the South African Maritime Safety Authority said in a statement Saturday. Cleaning of the beaches was underway.

Dutch experts were helping to salvage oil remaining in the sunken ship's fuel tanks.