Identification of factors causing population declines is a critical prerequisite for conserving threatened species. The most likely cause of dramatic decreases in numbers of the ‘Vulnerable’ Southern Rockhopper Penguin (Eudyptes chrysocome) in the twentieth century is oceanographic change reducing food availability. For example, the massive decline of the Eastern sub-species (E. c. filholi) on Campbell Island, New Zealand (94.6 %, 1942–2012), has been attributed to climate change. This decline reversed in the mid-1990s after a shift to favourable conditions, but a localized decline continued at a small, fragmented population in Penguin Bay, where one of five sub-colonies went extinct in 2010, and the number of breeding pairs fell from 7360 in 1984 to 3012 in 2012. Emerging concerns for Eudyptes penguins are the effects of increased predation from native predators. At Campbell Island, monitoring demonstrated that penguin eggs and chicks in smaller sub-colonies were most vulnerable to predation by Brown Skuas (Catharacta antarctica lonnbergi), so that average reproductive success was 25 % lower at the smallest sub-colony than at the largest. ‘Endangered’ New Zealand sea lions (Phocarctos hookeri) were estimated to depredate 6 % of the adult penguin population each year, which modelling identified as the most important driver of the population’s negative exponential growth rate (λ = 0.905, −9.5 % per year). Although occasional years of very poor food availability may exert a larger ‘bottom–up’ effect on penguin demographic rates, the ‘top–down’ effects of high avian and pinniped predation rates can be sufficient to drive the decline of small penguin populations.