Knitted Penguin Jumpers

When Little Penguins become oiled, they will try to preen and clean the toxic oil from their feathers, and ingesting it can kill them. It also damages their delicate feathers, which exposes their skin to extreme temperatures and they are left cold, heavy and unable to swim or hunt for food.

Little penguin rehabilitation jumpers play an important role in saving injured penguins. When oiled penguins are rescued and admitted to the Phillip Island Wildlife Clinic, knitted jumpers are temporarily placed on the penguins, acting as a barrier to prevent them from reaching their oily feathers with their beaks, before rescue staff are able to wash their bodies clean.

Our Knits for Nature penguin jumper program has been running for over 20 years. Over this time, generous knitters from across the globe have sent us over 200,000 little penguin jumpers! Most of the donated jumpers were suitable for little penguin rehabilitation in the event of an oil spill, however; despite the very best efforts, some jumpers were too big or small to fit the penguins or came adorned with embellishments which, while beautifully creative, would pose a risk to little penguins. These penguin jumpers are sold on plush penguin toys to raise funds for wildlife conservation on Phillip Island (Millowl). Since 2012, the sale of these jumpers has raised $387,700.

In 2019, Phillip Island Nature Parks opened a new modern and environmentally sustainable Penguin Parade Visitor Centre with generous funding support from the Victorian State Government. This redevelopment allowed the creation of a further 6.7 hectares of extra habitat and new homes for over 1,400 breeding little penguins. We hope to see this new habitat filled with little penguins over the coming seasons and wanted to ensure we had enough of the little penguin rehabilitation jumpers available in the event of an oil spill. So, we again asked our wonderful community of knitters to support these penguins by donating rehabilitation jumpers specifically.

As in previous years, our community grabbed their needles, wool and spun into action! We have now received thousands of rehabilitation jumpers and these are stored at the Phillip Island Nature Parks Wildlife Clinic.

The good news is that if you are still keen to knit, we are always grateful to receive jumpers to sell on plush penguin toys to raise much-needed funds for a variety of projects and conservation efforts of Phillip Island Nature Parks. More information and the pattern can be found here.

A huge thank you to all the wonderful knitters who have contributed to this program for your generosity. If you wish to make a financial donation also, you can Donate or Adopt a penguin here.