Dominique Schwartz December 2, 2011
TONY EASTLEY: Penguins seem to capture the imagination, more so than many other animals.
New Zealanders may love their penguins more than most, going to extreme lengths to care for the little creatures.
Here is New Zealand correspondent Dominique Schwartz.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: When the container ship Rena ran onto a reef in early October spilling 350 tonnes of oil into the wildlife rich waters of the Bay of Plenty, the word went out for a dozen jumpers for little penguins.
They're used to stop the birds from preening their feathers until they are properly cleaned, otherwise they ingest toxic oil which at best makes them sick - at worst kills them.
Maree Buskey, a local craft identity from a Napier yarn store, organised what she thought was a small knitting circle.
MAREE BUSKEY: Next thing you know it went quite viral and we now have 1500 to 2,000 jerseys later.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: Jumpers arrived from everywhere - the US, the UK, Scandinavia, even one from Mongolia.
MAREE BUSKEY: We got a lot of jumpers from Australia. They were really supportive.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: That's because Australians have been there before. In 1995 the ore carrier Iron Baron spilled oil at the mouth of the Tamar River in northern Tasmania. The state's environment protection authority estimated that as many as 17,000 little penguins died from oil pollution.
PETER MCGLONE: At the time they had very ill fitting ponchos that they put over the bird to try and stop them getting their beak near their feathers and it didn't work very well at all.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: Peter McGlone is the director of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust.
He says the 1995 disaster got conservationists thinking and experimenting. By 2001 they had a penguin jumper pattern they felt would work. They sent out a media release and got back 16,000 jumpers from around the world.
PETER MCGLONE: It was just a stupendous response - probably the most impressive was someone who went to the trouble of knitting the colours of every single one, as it was then, 16 Australian Rules football team jumpers and on the back was the number of the captain of each team which was pretty impressive.
There is just something about penguins I think. They are just comical, cute little birds that people instinctively respond to.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: The 16,000 jumpers sent to Tasmania are now part of the Tasmanian Government's oil spill response kit.
Here in New Zealand as it turns out the jumpers have not been needed because rescuers were able to clean the little penguins as soon as they were picked up. That hasn't stopped the knitters though.
So Maree Buskey is fitting the jumpers onto life sized stuffed toy penguins, selling them and putting the profit from each jersey into a wildlife fund for the area's birds. She's even had an order from North Pole, the town in Alaska.
source
New Zealanders may love their penguins more than most, going to extreme lengths to care for the little creatures.
Here is New Zealand correspondent Dominique Schwartz.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: When the container ship Rena ran onto a reef in early October spilling 350 tonnes of oil into the wildlife rich waters of the Bay of Plenty, the word went out for a dozen jumpers for little penguins.
They're used to stop the birds from preening their feathers until they are properly cleaned, otherwise they ingest toxic oil which at best makes them sick - at worst kills them.
Maree Buskey, a local craft identity from a Napier yarn store, organised what she thought was a small knitting circle.
MAREE BUSKEY: Next thing you know it went quite viral and we now have 1500 to 2,000 jerseys later.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: Jumpers arrived from everywhere - the US, the UK, Scandinavia, even one from Mongolia.
MAREE BUSKEY: We got a lot of jumpers from Australia. They were really supportive.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: That's because Australians have been there before. In 1995 the ore carrier Iron Baron spilled oil at the mouth of the Tamar River in northern Tasmania. The state's environment protection authority estimated that as many as 17,000 little penguins died from oil pollution.
PETER MCGLONE: At the time they had very ill fitting ponchos that they put over the bird to try and stop them getting their beak near their feathers and it didn't work very well at all.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: Peter McGlone is the director of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust.
He says the 1995 disaster got conservationists thinking and experimenting. By 2001 they had a penguin jumper pattern they felt would work. They sent out a media release and got back 16,000 jumpers from around the world.
PETER MCGLONE: It was just a stupendous response - probably the most impressive was someone who went to the trouble of knitting the colours of every single one, as it was then, 16 Australian Rules football team jumpers and on the back was the number of the captain of each team which was pretty impressive.
There is just something about penguins I think. They are just comical, cute little birds that people instinctively respond to.
DOMINIQUE SCHWARTZ: The 16,000 jumpers sent to Tasmania are now part of the Tasmanian Government's oil spill response kit.
Here in New Zealand as it turns out the jumpers have not been needed because rescuers were able to clean the little penguins as soon as they were picked up. That hasn't stopped the knitters though.
So Maree Buskey is fitting the jumpers onto life sized stuffed toy penguins, selling them and putting the profit from each jersey into a wildlife fund for the area's birds. She's even had an order from North Pole, the town in Alaska.
source
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