It takes a community to raise a kiwi, and Rick and Moira Haddrell have spent a decade preparing theirs.
The couple are working with the Department of Conservation and Save the Kiwi to become the first private landowners in the region to move kiwi onto private land.
The Haddrells, who sold premium Manuka honey brand Haddrells of Cambridge to Prolife Foods in 2015 and purchased the 470-hecatre Mangatiti farm, spent five years retiring the land from sheep and beef farming and preparing it for beehives. Then another five years making it ready to receive kiwi.
Save the Kiwi is supporting their application to DOC to receive Kiwi next year.
“Waitomo is one of our priority sites to get birds translocated to next season,” said Save the Kiwi operations manager Tineke Joustra.
“We are hoping to create a corridor leading to Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari.”
The Haddrells are hoping to receive the first of up to 250 kiwi over three or four years from Maungatautari and Lake Rotokare Scenic Reservice in Taranaki.
“When Save the Kiwi brought its team to the farm, they said it was perfect,” said Moira. “It’s summer safe.”
The farm, west of Waitomo village, receives about two and a half metres of rain per year, creating ground conditions that kiwi can get their beaks into for feeding on invertebrates, native fruit, berries, leaves and shoots.
Ōtorohanga Kiwi House is also supporting the project.
“It will be fantastic to release kiwi in our back yard,” said kiwi house operations manager Julian Phillips.
The area was known for a wild kiwi population, and kiwi song was last heard in 2023.
The Haddrells held a community engagement day last year to get everyone on the same page, including councillors, iwi, and neighbours.
The project started with the Haddrells putting bee hives on the farm and planting manuka with funding from Waikato Regional Council to support the bees.
“They were so happy to have the land reclaimed and stop the farm animals from pooping into the headwaters of the Waipā,” said Rick.
The Mangatiti Stream feeds into the Waipā then Waikato rivers.
The couple built a DOC hut style hut, complete with internal bathroom, from which to base themselves from for a few days a week.
From there they have planted 350,000 manuka bushes across the farm.
The beekeeping operation, managed by beekeepers Don and Amy Brill from Tirau, has been what Moira describes as a “bit of a fizzer” with a sharp fall in honey prices.
“The price was nearly $100 per kg of unprocessed manuka honey, now it’s $10 per kilogram,” she said.
The land is earning them “a couple of hundred grand” in carbon credits through the Emissions Trading Scheme which they are reinvesting back into it.
“It’s sort of our retirement thing; we don’t work for money anymore. It’s the right thing to do. The farm is regenerating back into native bush,” Rick said.
The couple have also dealt with the incursion of introduced pests.
“In the first three years we shot 700 goats,” he said.
They have placed countless traps to rid the farm from rats and stoats and soon noticed native birds and insects returning.
“It was silent before, but by destocking we soon started to see what the land could be,” Moira said.
“We have heard morepork and wētā.”
“Little did we know that years of doing the right thing would create the ideal spot for kiwi,” Rick said.
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari chief executive Helen Hughes was excited to hear of the Haddrells’ progress.
“It’s always exciting to see new conservation projects coming on,” she said. “It’s great seeing others investing in getting prepared.”
