Peter receives AM for almost half century of penguin dedication

PETER Dann has spent 50 years conserving, increasing and researching penguin populations on Phillip Island.
As Peter heads into an active retirement, he is being recognised for his significant service to the conservation, and the preservation of sea birds.
“It was a complete surprise I was even nominated; it was a complete honour to be nominated for the award and I’m very happy.”
Peter is quick to point out his gratitude to the many people who have contributed to and been involved with his conservation efforts.
“It also gives me an opportunity to acknowledge and thank the large number of people who had a stake in the work, my family and work colleagues and university partners and citizen scientists and members of different organisations.”
Peter initially put into place a number of strategies on Phillip Island to help preserve and increase penguin numbers when he realised they were in a dire state, with dramatic results.
“It was remarkable actually, almost everything we did worked, and the population was declining pretty rapidly. It was down to about eight to ten thousand breeding birds, and we did a number of things.”
One of these things was to slowly eradicate the feral foxes on the island, another was buying back the housing estate on the Summerland Peninsula, and where Peter lived at the time.
“The population has since grown to be about forty thousand breeding birds, so that’s very gratifying.”
Peter has worked with groups, organisations and individuals on the nature park and notes that Phillip Island has an unusual and unique but highly successful model of conservation, which allowed them to work on projects with a sense of permanency. 
“I inherited the help of a group called the Penguin Study Group which went for 50 years, and it was made up purely of citizen scientists, some of them with very professional back grounds, who just gave up their time to study penguins and give us a basis concerning the population.
“Most of the proceeds of the nature parks of Phillip Island goes into conservation and management of wildlife on the island. It’s meant that it’s been a well-resourced (until COVID) organisation and we could do things that were long term in nature.”
Peter has had a bond with the Island since he was three. One of his first memories was hearing people playing table tennis outside of his bedroom window while on holidays at the Kaloha Caravan Park in Cowes.
He attributes his initial interest in natural history to his parents, and going on camps with Bird Life Australia got him particularly hooked on birds.
“I don’t know quite why I bonded so closely with birds, but I do like all of nature, but it’s birds that just struck a chord with me from a very early age.
“They are certainly iconic and charming creatures.”
Although Peter has retired, he remains as Director of the Penguin Foundation, working with a number of students on Phillip Island in conjunction with the Nature Park and is also on a few other local conservation committees.
“The lines between work and hobbies and fun are fairly blurred,” he said. 
Overall, penguin populations are declining across Australia and although Peter and others have discovered that this is due to all things that are human in origin, like overfishing, pollution, and climate change, the knowledge isn’t translating into sustainable action.
“We know everyone loves penguins, but we can’t seem to make the connection with everyone that this thing they love is not going to be with us forever if we don’t change some of the things we’re doing to the world’s oceans and the world’s climate.
“I think this is the next challenge for us as conservationists, to get the population to put their money where their mouth is.”