AUSTRALIA: FAIRY PENGUINS KITTED OUT WITH KNITTED JUMPERS TO PROTECT THEM FROM OIL SPILLS

Record ID: 860750

  • Title: AUSTRALIA: FAIRY PENGUINS KITTED OUT WITH KNITTED JUMPERS TO PROTECT THEM FROM OIL SPILLS
  • Date: 26th May 2001
  • Summary: (U3) SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) SLV RESCUED PENGUINS WHO AFTER BEING CLEANED OF OIL ARE RELEASED BACK INTO THE WILD (3 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 10th June 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LAUNCESTON, SYDNEY AND UNSPECIFIED LOCATIONS, AUSTRALIA
  • City:
  • Country: Australia
  • Topics: Environment
  • Reuters ID: LVA5519FULPOZP7AMHX572WR648O
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Australia's Fairy penguins are all set for winter and any oil spills after 1,000 tiny woolly jumpers have been specially knitted and sent, some from as far away as Japan, to the Australian island state of Tasmania.
    The Tasmanian Conservation Trust made a local appeal earlier this year for the protective penguin jumpers after oil spills on the coast of Tasmania, not realising they would be inundated.
    Community groups such as the staff at a Launceston library have since been knitting jumpers by the hundreds, although some have come from as far as Japan, and the trust have received requests for the pattern from as far away as New York.
    The jumpers cover the 40 cm (15 inches) tall penguins from neck to ankle and come in a variety of colours and designs, even a black and white tuxedo jumper, complete with bow tie.
    Jo Carswell, a representative of the trust, said that the penguins dislike the jumpers but that they stop those birds which encounter an oil slick from injesting poisonous oils during preening.
    She said: "If they run into an oil spill, they need to be cleaned. Before they are ready to be cleaned they need to have jumpers put on them because they are preeners and they preen themselves and they ingest the oil."
    Carswell said knitters, most of them old ladies in nursing homes, made jumpers in a variety of styles, often using their favourite football team colours. They used scraps of wool to make patchwork jumpers, and some knitted woolly tuxedos in keeping with a penguins natural plummage.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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