Blog: The smell of success - how Humans and Penguins coexist at Punta San Juan, Peru

In this week's blog, Lloyd Wilkinson (Senior Aquarist & Penguin Keeper, The Deep) takes us to the shores of Peru to discuss how conservation comes from coexistence:

When I first arrived at Punta San Juan in Peru, the very air hit me before I even stepped foot into the reserve. It was thick with the unmistakable, heavy scent of guano (bird poop). Looking out, the landscape felt less like South America and more like a barren, alien moon. Underneath the constant, roaring wall of noise from the nearby fur seal colonies, it hit me instantly: I was in for some tough, but incredibly rewarding, work.

As a Senior Aquarist and Penguin Keeper at The Deep, I am lucky enough to work with amazing marine life every day. But stepping out of my usual routine to assist the Punta San Juan Program took things to a whole new level. For over 30 years, this incredible project has been working directly on the ground to protect seabirds and marine mammals. This 133-acre peninsula is a bustling wildlife haven, home to Peru's largest colony of Humboldt penguins, massive populations of South American fur seals and sea lions, and countless other bird species like Guanay cormorants, Inca terns, and Peruvian boobies.

What makes Punta San Juan truly unique, though, is how it handles a centuries-old Peruvian tradition: guano harvesting. Packed with natural nutrients like nitrogen and phosphate, guano is a highly valuable fertiliser. Every seven or more years, a harvest takes place, and over 150 workers move onto the headlands to collect it. In most parts of the world, this kind of human industry would mean total disaster for the local wildlife. Habitat degradation and climate change already put so much pressure on these animals, so adding human crowds to the mix sounds like a recipe for catastrophe.

But what I witnessed here completely changed my perspective on how humans and nature can coexist.

Instead of fighting the industry, the Punta San Juan Program works directly with the Peruvian government to make the harvest sustainable. No loud, destructive machinery is allowed; everything is carefully collected by hand. Special walls have been built to block the penguins' line of sight to the workers. Even the workers’ clothing is carefully thought out as they wear pale colours to blend into the dusty landscape, and they maintain a strict minimum distance of 50 metres. This means they are never allowed close to the colonies and therefore the birds are not disturbed or scared.

Additionally, the guano fertiliser itself is only sold to small-scale Peruvian farmers who manage a farm of two hectares or less. It is sold at a much cheaper rate than traditional artificial fertilisers and remains solely for use inside Peru. Combining this high-quality, nutrient-rich powder with affordable pricing allows Peru to support family farms in rural areas, bringing prosperity through increased crop yields and financial savings to economically challenged regions. This is further boosted by the fact that the guano workers are paid a relatively good wage. Because they usually come from these same areas, they bring their earnings back home, financially improving rural communities from the ground up.

My days were packed with an assortment of hands-on conservation tasks. Nevertheless, our main priority was to observe the penguins as they crossed the peninsula to ensure the harvest caused absolutely zero impact or disturbance. The team is constantly looking for any adjustments that can be made to improve harvest practices. They also use drones to photograph and count each nesting pair one by one, keeping an incredibly accurate tab on the colony's population.

On quieter days, I found myself rolling up my sleeves to sift through fur seal faecal samples (yes, more poop!) to help researchers monitor the health of the local marine ecosystem. We also spent hours doing some much-needed beach cleans. While the site is completely closed off by a 5-mile concrete wall to prevent human disturbance, the amount of debris that washes up on the shores is astounding. We ended up hauling away heavy piles of discarded plastics and abandoned fishing gear that pose a constant threat to all the animals at Punta San Juan.

I was completely blown away by how forward-thinking this project is, and just how deeply passionate the team is. Everyone is fully aware that if there are no birds, there is no guano. By working together with the government, they have developed strategies to allow this agricultural tradition to continue while constantly improving the environment so the different bird colonies can return and grow. Ultimately, they are creating a sustainable blueprint that could be rolled out across all 22 of Peru’s guano islands.

The team is acutely aware of how the complete exploitation of a site can seriously impact a species. The devastating decline of South Africa’s seabirds, most notably the endangered African penguin, is deeply tied to the 19th-century "guano rush." When colonial industries stripped those beaches and islands bare to harvest fertiliser for global markets, they effectively demolished the birds' natural nesting infrastructure. Forced to nest on bare, exposed rock or open sand, generations of birds have faced catastrophic breeding failures, as their unprotected nests are regularly flooded by storms, baked in extreme heat, or targeted by predators – not to mention the devastating impacts from the fishing and marine industry. It is a historic ecological trauma that continues to cripple population recovery efforts today.

Ultimately, my time in Peru taught me a vital lesson. Conservation doesn’t always have to involve separating nature from human activity to ensure it is kept protected. When we use the right, respectful strategies and commit to constant vigilance, we don’t have to choose between human agriculture and saving wildlife…

We can choose both.

To find out more about this incredible project or to offer your support, please check out The Deep & the Punta San Juan Program website.

- Lloyd Wilkinson, Senior Aquarist & Penguin Keeper, The Deep

All blogs reflect the views of their author and are not necessarily a reflection of BIAZA's positions