UNORTHODOX SANCTUARY

UNORTHODOX SANCTUARY

Not all casualties of war are human. Either through collateral damage or because we deliberately set them on fire, animals are also victims. If there’s any creature that has found a silver lining in all this, it’s the penguins living in the Falkland Islands.

The Falkland Islands are small. Collectively, the 200-plus islands that make up the Falklands are only about as big as Connecticut.

During the Falklands War, the Argentinians heavily mined the islands to hold off a British invasion. After the war, penguins came to inhabit the various minefields. Too light to set off the mines, the penguins have thrived in their unorthodox sanctuaries.

The Falkland Islands aren’t home to much, other than about 3,000 humans, 700,000 sheep, and a few fishing installations. What they do have, however, is an enormous population of penguins from five different species — the Southern Rockhoppers, the Magellanic, the King, the Gentoo, and the Macaroni. Their names derive from, respectively, the ability to hop on rocks, a celebrated circumnavigator, a British ruler, a religious slur, and a slang reference to flashy dressers. With these five species combined, the Falklands are home to a penguin army more than one million strong.

The fenced-off minefields have also allowed other wildlife and vegetation to recover from the effects of human habitation and overgrazing by livestock.