THE Ōtorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park is preparing to farewell 13 kiwi this weekend, including breeding programme matriarch ‘Anahera’, as they are released in Wellington. PHOTO ŌTOROHANGA KIWI HOUSE AND NATIVE BIRD PARK
FOR the first time in 42 years an Ōtorohanga kiwi will not be bound by fences. On Saturday ‘Anahera’, the kiwi that started Ōtorohanga Kiwi House and Native Bird Park’s captive breeding programme in 1980, will be released in Wellington with 12 others. She was the original wild kiwi genetics captured in what has become four decades of breeding in Ōtorohanga, along with several other founder birds. Kiwi house general manager Jo Russell said ‘Anahera’ originally came from east Taranaki. “So in a way we’re saying ‘hey we had to pick your bird up in the early 80s and we’ve been successful with the programme, she can now come back into your caretakership.’
STRONG BREEDER “It’s a lovely closure.” Jo said despite her seemingly advanced age, ‘Anahera’ continued to be a strong breeder and though experts were still learning about western brown kiwi, they were expected to live well into their 50s. “‘Anahera’ is still breeding, still fertile and ready to establish the new population. “I think she has been the strongest breeding bird in the captive breeding programme in terms of the number of offspring she has produced, partly because she has been in the programme so long.” The kiwi release comes as the result of a partnership with Wellington charitable trust The Capital Kiwi Project, which has been involved in intensive pest trapping in Wellington with about 4500 traps protecting against mustelids across 23,455ha of western Wellington.
HUGE WIN “It’s a huge win for Wellington to finally get kiwi ready to be released,” Jo said. Of the 13 kiwi being gifted by the kiwi house, with the support of Tārewānga Marae and Ngāti Hinewai, six are breeding pairs. It is hoped the remainder will be good partners for birds that will be released in years to come. Jo said all the kiwi being released were adults, and the hope was instead of wandering around trying to find mates, they would hunker down to establish a territory. “The reason it’s important to release adult birds that are breeding first is that when we release them, they are more interested in breeding than in running around. “They’ll stick in an area and claim that as a territory and they’ll call.” With the ‘vocal anchor’ established, the plan is to release more, and younger, kiwi in coming years.
WORKED HARD The kiwi are being released from Mākara, but the protected area stretches from Red Rocks in the south to north-west of Porirua. “It’s a huge bit of territory. I remember people saying they just couldn’t do it, there was no way they’d be able to get stoat numbers low enough to be able to release kiwi in there,” Jo said. “But man, they’ve worked hard.” Capital Kiwi Project said on its website that extensive monitoring in the past three years has shown predators have been removed to a level to allow for the safe return of kiwi. It also said wild kiwi have been missing from the southwest of the North Island for more than a century, though kiwi do live behind predator-proof fences in places like Zealandia. Jo said work was being done through Mākara School to educate the community about the risk dogs pose to kiwi.
NO MATCH FOR DOGS While adult kiwi can fight off a stoat, they’re no match for a dog, she said. “Sometimes it can be a pet dog. It’s not always wild dogs, it’s not always hunting dogs, sometimes it’s ‘Fifi’ the bichon frise. “Because kiwi don’t have the flight muscles around their keel, they don’t have any strength around that, and they’re really vulnerable to getting knocked in the chest.” The community was getting its dogs trained to be adverse to kiwi, Jo said, so if they catch the scent of a kiwi they will go away from it rather than being attracted to it. Releasing the kiwi in the capital is somewhat of a full-circle moment for the kiwi house team. “The kiwi house were instrumental in putting the first bird into Maungatautari when it was predator-fenced,” Jo said. “Now the offspring of the offspring of those birds will be released into Capital Kiwi, almost reuniting whanau. “It’s just beautiful. It’s really great to get to that point.” Jo said if all the community groups currently working together continued to do so for the next decade, kiwi would no longer be a threatened species. “And that’s huge. That’s why the kiwi house has existed for 50 years and it’s what drove this. “We love the idea we might be out of the job.” But although Jo joked, there was still more work to do. FUTURE PLANS Next year the kiwi house team was planning to head into South Waikato to try to find the last wild kiwi in the area. “Finding those birds is incredibly important because they hold the genetic material of populations that have been lost and we can then work with those birds to try and rebuild the genetic makeup of those populations. “Our desire as an organisation is to identify the last remnants of kiwi and then work on a programme with Save the Kiwi, the national conservation organisation that works alongside the Department of Conservation. “As these seed beds grow we will in the future be looking for programmes and projects like Capital Kiwi where we can gather resources together and create kiwi safe release sites.”
