A Snares penguin from islands south of New Zealand is found wounded on a Tasmanian beach. Nine months’ nursing later, she tastes the open sea again
by Grace Heathcote
by Grace Heathcote
Sunday 3 September
2017 19.00 BSTLast modified on Sunday 3 September
2017 23.48 BST
Just before dawn on a still
morning in autumn a crowd of people gathers on a beach in southern Tasmania. They
watch in tense silence as a small animal shuffles across the sand. This animal,
a penguin, has been the focus of nine months of care, liaison and cooperation
to get to this moment – she is being released and sent back out into her world.
I am privileged to be included in the farewell crew, and share the jubilation
and anxiety of the people around me, all of us hoping that she will remember
her path home.
So far from home
In July 2014, bushwalkers at
Cockle Creek, in the far south of Tasmania, witnessed a penguin being attacked
by a dog. A parks and wildlife ranger investigated and found the penguin
wandering the shoreline, carrying serious wounds on its back, chest and foot.
With bright yellow “eyebrows”, this was not one of the little penguins common
to the state but a Snares penguin, usually found on a group of islands 200km
south of New
Zealand – and more than 2,000km away from Tasmania.
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