Brazil plans military mission to save wayward penguins

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Brazil is staging a military operation involving a Hercules transport plane and Navy ships – all to return four dozen lost penguins to the icy waters of Antarctica, authorities said Wednesday.

The 50 birds are the survivors among 135 that started appearing in Rio de Janeiro in early June, dragged to warm Brazilian waters by ocean currents, said Giselda Candiotto, president of Rio’s Niteroi Zoo Foundation, which is caring for the penguins.

A Hercules C-130 transport airplane will take the flightless birds to Pelotas in southern Brazil on Sept. 23 for the first leg of their journey home, the Air Force’s press office said. There, they will be examined by veterinarians at the Marine Animal Rehabilitation Center of the Eliezer de Carvalho Rios Oceanographic Museum.

From Pelotas, the penguins will be driven to the coast and placed on Navy ships. They will be taken 40 miles offshore before being released into the southern Atlantic.

“They are young, inexperienced animals that, in their search for food, get caught in the ocean currents,” she said. The birds arrive near Rio having lost about two-thirds of their body weight. About half die of hyperthermia, hyperglycemia and exhaustion, she added.