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I love Emperor Penguins.  They are so big and flappy.  They are resilient and amazing critters who roam around the Antarctica, breeding and eating and making lots of noise.  And there’s so many of them.
So, when one such penguin arrived in New Zealand and promptly got sick because he was eating sand instead of ice, he was taken in, surgery was done on him and he was nursed back to health to get a free trip on a research vessel back towards home.
Isn’t that sweet.
All to the tune of about $60,000. That’s NZ dollars.
I’m all for looking after our world, and the life that inhabits it.  I’m pretty sure the money spent on saving a penguin who couldn’t get home isn’t money well spent.  Why don’t we nip down to the Antarctic and save the baby Emperor Penguins that don’t get fed because their parent doesn’t return with food, or the egg freezes on  the ice?  We don’t because they’re not in danger of extinction.
That’s money that could have been spent on saving… oh I don’t know…. people in Africa starving perhaps. Â It’d buy a lot of rice, at the very least they could tuck into some penguin steak.