Dr Peter Dann is synonymous with penguins and his retirement from Phillip Island Nature Parks in June marked the end of an era.

As one of Phillip Island’s first penguin researchers, his renown in Nature Parks is almost equal to that of the feathered icons and their nightly parade. When he started 42 years ago the island’s penguin population numbered about 8000 – 10,000. Today it totals more than 40,000 breeding birds.

His work has been critical to ensuring the penguins’ survival. As well as working to remove foxes from the island, he was instrumental in the state government buy-back of properties on the Summerland Peninsula to create penguin habitat and remove the threat of road kill.

With 60 per cent of the world’s 18 species of penguins currently threatened due to climate change, the fact that the local population is thriving is due in no small part, to the decades of work by Peter and his team.

His work with Phillip Island’s penguins started back in 1980, when he took a three-year contract studying the population trends. At the time, penguin numbers were declining and it was believed the increasing tourism numbers were the cause.

Alongside the work around foxes and the Summerland Peninsula buy-back, Peter and the research team also investigated the impact of tourism, comparing populations at the parade against another secluded group on a different beach a couple of kilometres away.

They found there was no issue with visitors, and in fact, Peter says tourism has ensured long-term research funding to enable the health and viability of the penguin population.

Over his 42 years, Peter has clocked up an impressive list of achievements, including working on other penguin species in New Zealand and South Africa and at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, UK, as well as Heard Island in the Australian Antarctic Division.

He published more than 200 papers and book chapters and edited a book on penguin ecology and management and co-supervised about 50 PhD, masters and honours students.

His main research interests are population regulation, demography, climate change, ecology of islands and the conservation of threatened species.

He has also amassed a handful of titles: adjunct Professor at Victoria University, honorary fellow of Birdlife Australia and Melbourne University, a past board member and founding member of the World Seabird Union and past chair of the Australasian Seabird Group.

But perhaps the accolades from his co-workers best describe this local legend, including “humble and modest”, “an extraordinary individual” and “a bloody good bloke”.

Even though he’s retired Peter says he won’t be slowing down.

“I still have four PhD students I’ll continue to co-supervise. I have a backlog of (scientific) papers to be written.

“I also hope to write a book on the birds of Phillip Island, which I’ve been keeping notes on for 20 years.”