29 Oct 2019

Oamaru pub owner rescues penguin after tourists pick it up

From Checkpoint, 5:55 pm on 29 October 2019

Now to a story about a penguin and a pub.

The owner of the Criterion Hotel, on Harbour Street in Oamaru, was left stunned when some tourists handed her a little penguin chick over the weekend, after she told them that touching the bird was illegal.

The Blue Penguin Colony rescued the bird and released it back into the ocean, but its Science and Environmental manager, Dr Phillipa Agnew, says she's concerned that this kind of behaviour is on the rise.

She spoke to Checkpoint's South Island multimedia reporter Logan Church.