SYDNEY, Australia — Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — an organization that undertakes hundreds of life-saving humanitarian service projects across the world every year — are collaborating with community members on a project to save the lives, not of people, but of an endangered species.
When they heard about rare fairy penguins suffering from the effects of oil spills, Jenny Allen and Marion Braun, members of the Church from the New South Wales coastal town of Coffs Harbour, organized a campaign to bring together Australian and New Zealand women aged 50 to 80 to knit sweaters for the foot-high penguins. With the help of Pet Porpoise Pool, an oceanarium in New South Wales, the group was able to rally over 300 knitters and produce 1,800 doll-size sweaters.
The sweaters, or "jumpers" as Australians call them, are crucial to the survival of these birds. Once the penguins’ feathers have been damaged in an oil spill, they must go through an extensive cleaning process. The oil damage and the cleaning interfere with their natural insulation. The Sydney Morning Herald reported, "The doll size, tight-fitting 100 per cent wool sweaters keep the penguins warm during the rehabilitation process and stop them preening and ingesting the poisonous oil, and lifts their survival rate to about 98 per cent."
The knitters have produced so many colorful sweaters that some are now being sold in the Phillip Island Nature Reserve gift shop on toy penguins. The money that has been raised has allowed the reserve to build a rehabilitation pool. The reserve in Victoria, Australia, is a popular tourist attraction world famous for its "parade" of fairy penguins — the nightly march of penguins from sea to shore. The reserve attracts over 500,000 visitors a year, but it is also a refuge and rehabilitation center for penguins that are injured.