Impressive effort, Chlidonias!
It would be interesting to know why Little Penguins died out outside Australia and New Zealand. Is there something special in their biology?
It would be also interesting to know why Emperor Penguins are in only one collection in the USA and absent in Europe, although a number of places is East Asia keep and apparently breed them.
Little blues have done very well in North America, in both Canada and the US. They bred very well in Canada in the '80s and '90s before almost the whole colony was sent back from Quebec to Australia. In the States they also breed very well. Bronx, Cincinnati, DWA and New England all have regular breeding, and some birds are pushing past the 3rd generation now, if I can recall properly.
The never established in Europe for two main reasons. Firstly, the founder population was quite small, and only a small number of institutions held them, with even fewer having breeding success (only Antwerp and Colonge bred the species, and between the two only a couple of birds were successfully bred). After that it would definitely be disease. Many of the birds in Europe, and most notably at Wuppertal (the last holder of the specie) died of aspergillosis. Even their large imported group of 30 birds in 2011 all perished from the disease within a year and a half.
In the asian countries they run into issues with asper and malaria with the birds, however some have managed to live for many years. My knowledge of the asian ppulation is minimal, however. In Japan most if not all of the birds are recent imports, so only time will tell how well they do with them.
As for emperors, it has everything to do with collection location and housing requirements. The reason they only established in Japan and San Diego is because the birds were collected in the 80's when husbandry was advanced enough to actually keep the birds alive to breeding age, and the birds went to facilities actually setup for antarctic species. Prior to this they were mainly housed in a similar fashion to king penguins, which resulted in birds not living long lives and never breeding. Along with need very specific housing requirements, their collection location meant they were rather difficult to collect, so only the most dedicated of facilities were willing to pursue them by the time their successful housing and breeding became a possibility, as opposed to going for the very similar, but more more established and durable king penguin.
As for the Chinese facilities, all of their birds were wild caught as adults within the past ten years or less. Their success has a couple of factors:
1.) Husbandry knowledge has advanced greatly, so enclosures to fit their needs were designed right off the get-go.
2.) Large founder populations were established.
3.)Money. The Chinese facilities working with these birds are all funded on MASSIVE budgets, so they are able to invest the capital in to good enclosures and collecting large populations of birds.
