Yellow-eyed penguins are having a major influence on the peninsula. Much of the outer coast is now controlled by groups which have the welfare of the birds at heart: DoC, the World Wildlife Fund, the Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust, Howard McGrouther and others. The Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust, which has been sponsored by Mainland Cheese for 11 years, has 2200 members, nine trustees and three employees. With the Dunedin City Council, the trust recently bought 231 ha at Okia, behind Victory Bay, and planted 14,000 native plants there to improve the habitat for penguin nesting. The trust is active on the birds’ behalf wherever they are found, not just on the peninsula. “Yellow-eyed penguins are very solitary, espe­cially when nesting,” Dave Blair, one of the trust workers, told me. “One nest per hectare is about the usual density. If one pair can see another, both nests will usually fail.”