Two recent penguin finds have sparked renewed calls for dogs to be kept on leashes on Oamaru beaches.<\/p>\n
Oamaru Penguins science and environmental manager Dr Philippa Agnew said a little penguin had to be euthanised after suffering injuries from a dog bite \u2014 and a rare visitor, a snares crested penguin, was spotted in an area well-used by dog walkers.<\/p>\n
Oamaru Penguins staff collected a little penguin over the long weekend that had been \u2018\u2018bitten by a dog\u2019\u2019, Dr Agnew said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018He was still alive but had to be euthanised as his injuries were not survivable.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Please always have your dog on a leash in coastal areas, even if you think there isn\u2019t any wildlife present,\u2019\u2019 Dr Agnew said.<\/p>\n
Little penguins were a \u2018\u2018cryptic species\u2019\u2019 and could be anywhere along the district\u2019s coastline, she said.<\/p>\n
At this time of year the birds were coming ashore to moult and might hide in areas where they would not normally go.<\/p>\n
The euthanised little penguin was about 1 year old and had fledged from the Oamaru Penguins colony, she said.<\/p>\n
Staff had also recently collected a snares crested penguin from Beach Rd.<\/p>\n
The area was known to be used by lots of dog walkers, she said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Oamaru Penguins was very busy as Chinese New Year approached \u2014 more than 500 people were visiting the colony per day at present, Dr Agnew said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two recent penguin finds have sparked renewed calls for dogs to be kept on leashes on Oamaru beaches.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-284935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}