Earthcare St Kilda is the not-for-profit volunteer organisation that researches, protects and advocates for the little penguin colony at the St Kilda breakwater. Its work is the reason the colony has grown steadily for nearly four decades, and it is the reason the site is legally recognised as a wildlife sanctuary rather than a piece of incidental coastal infrastructure.
This page explains what Earthcare does, how the group came to exist and where the daily work of caring for the penguins sits within the wider structure of local volunteers, councils and state agencies that keep the colony alive.
What Earthcare St Kilda Actually Does
The group’s activity breaks into three rough categories. The first is research. Volunteer researchers have recorded nest occupancy, breeding success, weights and banding data on the breakwater colony continuously since 1986 — one of the longest unbroken little penguin datasets anywhere in mainland Australia. Without that data, none of the planning decisions that have protected the colony would have been possible.
The second is community guiding. From the late 1990s onwards, Earthcare trained volunteer penguin guides who staff the viewing area on evenings when the colony is most active. The guides are the reason you can stand metres away from wild little penguins and have them continue to come ashore undisturbed — without that on-site intervention, the viewing experience would have been closed decades ago for the colony’s own protection.
The third is advocacy. Earthcare makes submissions to Parks Victoria, local councils and state planning bodies on anything that might affect the breakwater — pier redevelopments, shipping channel changes, foreshore lighting, rubbish management and off-leash dog policies. When the pier itself was redeveloped between 2022 and 2024, Earthcare was a formal consultee in the engineering and landscape design decisions.
How the Group Was Formed
Earthcare St Kilda emerged out of the scientific interest that Professor Mike Cullen of Monash University brought to the breakwater in 1986. When Cullen began fortnightly research visits, a small circle of St Kilda residents became involved — first as volunteer field assistants, then as an organised community group with ongoing meetings and a loose structure. By 1989 the group had formalised itself into Earthcare St Kilda, a local not-for-profit with the specific mission of protecting the colony.
Through the early 1990s the group expanded its research beyond breeding counts, campaigned successfully for the 1992 declaration of the breakwater as a Wildlife Management Cooperative Area, and grew from a handful of volunteers into a network of trained researchers and interpreters. After Mike Cullen’s death in 2001 the research programme continued under Earthcare’s own coordination, with senior volunteers inheriting the data management and analysis roles he had built up.
Where Earthcare Sits in the Wider Conservation Network
The St Kilda colony is managed in collaboration with several agencies, not by Earthcare alone. Parks Victoria is the land manager for the pier and breakwater, and has formal responsibility for the structure. The City of Port Phillip, which the St Kilda foreshore falls within, manages the surrounding foreshore parkland. Phillip Island Nature Parks — the body responsible for Victoria’s much larger little penguin colony on Summerland Beach — provides operational support, particularly around the viewing programme.
Within this network, Earthcare’s role is specialist. It holds the decades of historical research data. It supplies the trained volunteer base. It represents the colony’s interests in planning processes. And it is the single continuous institutional memory of the colony, stretching back to the first fortnightly visits in 1986.
Why the Model Works
Urban wildlife sites very rarely thrive. A city harbour is loud, lit, busy with dogs and people, and full of risks that offshore nesting sites do not face. That the St Kilda colony has not just survived but grown in the middle of a city of five million is unusual enough to attract international research interest.
Most of the explanations come back to long-term volunteer involvement. A colony that has researchers on the rocks every fortnight, guides at the viewing area every evening and advocates in every planning meeting is a colony that attracts sustained attention from every agency above it. A colony that depended solely on a paid government programme would have been less visible, less well-documented and far more vulnerable to quiet budget cuts.
How Earthcare Is Funded and Run
Earthcare St Kilda is a volunteer-run not-for-profit. It relies on a mixture of member contributions, small grants from state and local government, visitor donations collected at the viewing area, and sporadic larger gifts for specific projects. No one in the organisation is paid a salary. The people who run the research, train the guides and represent the colony in planning meetings are giving their evenings and weekends to it.
The organisation welcomes new volunteers, particularly those able to commit to regular guiding shifts at the viewing area or to the slower, more methodical work of research monitoring. Training is provided and no prior experience is required. More information about getting involved is available on the How Can I Help page.