The GREEN Page

FLIPPER AND FINNEGAN BY SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM

Lower Juniors learnt what happened in 2001 when an oil spill affected a large population of little penguins living on Phillip Island. A team of rangers at the Wildlife Centre with the help of volunteers, cleaned ten thousand penguins with soap and water to dissolve the oil. The rangers put out a call for knitters to knit tiny jumpers to stop the penguins preening themselves and ingesting the oil. They collected one hundred thousand jumpers. The tiny penguin-shaped jumpers kept the penguins safe and warm while they recovered.