People fed up with the rabbits and chocolate eggs sold year after year in supermarkets can take part in a new campaign this Easter that offers them to adopt a penguin egg that is about to hatch, Reuters reports.

The eggs will not be taken home, however, as the campaign was launched by an environmental group that has hatched more than 200 eggs of an endangered species: African penguins since the beginning of this year. The eggs were rescued from two penguin colonies.

The group in question, the South African Trust for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), is appealing for donations to cover the cost of incubating the eggs, inviting people to ‘adopt’:

The African penguin, the only one that breeds on this continent, was once the most numerous seabird in southern Africa. But the species has declined dramatically, with SANCCOB estimating that there are now fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs in South Africa.

Eco-activists sound the alarm, because a century ago, a million pairs of African penguins lived here.

“According to the current trajectory, the loss is 8%. [a populației] every year we face extinction by 2035,” Ronnis Daniels, director of resources at SANCCOB, told Reuters.

She notes that there won’t be enough pairs left in the wild for the population to survive.

A penguin easter egg?

Threats to African penguins are many, but activists say the main problem is commercial fishing, which has depleted the stocks of sardines and anchovies on which the penguins depend.

“That would be at the top of the list,” Daniels notes.

Other threats include pollution and noise from ships sailing around Africa past the Cape of Good Hope. Attacks by Houthi rebels on ships transiting the Red Sea, which forced shipping companies to divert their vessels to the Cape of Good Hope, further worsened the situation.

“At a time when everyone is thinking about chocolates and fluffy bunnies, we would like you to adopt a penguin egg,” Nicky Shadbolt, one of the SANCCOB volunteers, told Reuters via Reuters.

“It’s very expensive for us to raise this little penguin to maturity,” she added, explaining that penguins can only be released into the wild four months after hatching.

Although the campaign was launched in South Africa, SAMCCOB is also accepting donations from other countries on its website.