{"id":3707,"date":"2026-05-14T11:40:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/?p=3707"},"modified":"2026-05-14T11:44:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:44:00","slug":"how-a-kindergarten-teacher-became-the-accidental-guardian-of-200-king-penguins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/2026\/05\/14\/how-a-kindergarten-teacher-became-the-accidental-guardian-of-200-king-penguins\/","title":{"rendered":"How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-opt-id=1591103829  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3708\" src=\"https:\/\/mliu8nxwhmtf.i.optimole.com\/w:300\/h:300\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/king-penguins-beach.jpg\" alt=\"King penguins\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mliu8nxwhmtf.i.optimole.com\/w:300\/h:300\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/king-penguins-beach.jpg 300w, https:\/\/mliu8nxwhmtf.i.optimole.com\/w:150\/h:150\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/king-penguins-beach.jpg 150w, https:\/\/mliu8nxwhmtf.i.optimole.com\/w:768\/h:768\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/king-penguins-beach.jpg 768w, https:\/\/mliu8nxwhmtf.i.optimole.com\/w:1024\/h:1024\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/king-penguins-beach.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>(From &#8216;The Guardian&#8217;, 14th May 2026)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The king penguin (<em>Aptenodytes patagonicus<\/em><em>) <\/em>makes its home almost exclusively on islands in the Southern Ocean. But it has been coming to this wind-battered bay in southern Chile\u2019s Tierra del Fuego region for hundreds of years, probably because its shallow shores offer protection from marine predators and humans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Early explorers named it Useless Bay because those same shores made landing boats, including industrial fishing vessels, nearly impossible. Still, humans remained such a threat that no permanent colony of king penguins formed here until 2010. Then, as a colony started to develop, a local landowner and former kindergarten teacher Cecilia Dur\u00e1n Gafo, now 72, decided she would protect them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Today, she runs a reserve that oversees the only continental king penguin colony in the world, one that has grown from a handful of penguins to nearly 200.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2026\/may\/14\/continental-king-penguin-colony-useless-bay-chile\">More from &#8216;The Guardian&#8217;&#8230;.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(From &#8216;The Guardian&#8217;, 14th May 2026) The king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) makes its home almost exclusively on islands in the Southern Ocean. But it has been coming to this wind-battered &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/2026\/05\/14\/how-a-kindergarten-teacher-became-the-accidental-guardian-of-200-king-penguins\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[408,409,407],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chile","category-conservation","category-king-penguins"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3709,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707\/revisions\/3709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/walleahpress.com.au\/currajah\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}