{"id":599623,"date":"2026-09-14T01:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/599623\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T01:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:52:11","slug":"petone-beachs-leopard-seal-found-dead-being-tested-for-bird-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/599623\/","title":{"rendered":"Petone Beach&#8217;s leopard seal found dead, being tested for bird flu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">A leopard seal which hundreds of spectators visited has died, a Hutt City councillor says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Councillor Brady Dyer said the seal would be removed by the Department of Conservation (DOC) on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Conservationists echoed the news on social media, saying they suspected the seal looked unwell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">DOC acting operations manager Olivia Keane said the female r\u0101poka \/ leopard seal was found dead in the Hutt River on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Keane said the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) had been informed and would be testing for H5 bird flu.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;DOC is working alongside Taranaki Wh\u0101nui on next steps including the removal and burial to ensure tikanga is observed.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leopard seal which hundreds of spectators visited has died, a Hutt City councillor says. Councillor Brady Dyer&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-599623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599623","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=599623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}