Kiwi welcomed to new Makara home

By Frank Neill

Twenty five kiwi were welcomed to their new home in the hills of Makara during a Powhiri at Pipitea Marae at 7am on 9 May.

As well as welcoming the kiwi, the powhiri also celebrated the formal gifting of the kiwi so they can be released into the wild.

The 25 North Island Brown Kiwi welcomed on 9 May were released later in the morning, and they will be joined by 25 more kiwi next week.

The first 25 travelled from Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari in the Waikato, arriving at Pipitea Marae at around 6am.

The release of the 50 kiwi results from a partnership between the Capital Kiwi Project and Save the Kiwi.

The birds are the fruits of anga Kiwi, an extensive kiwi breeding programme managed by Save the Kiwi at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, Aotearoa-New Zealand’s largest predator-fenced sanctuary at 3,400 hectares.

The K anga Kiwi programme isdesigned to enable the rapid repopulation of wild kiwi across Aotearoa’s landscape on anongoing basis, Save the Kiwi Executive Director, Michelle Impey, says.

“If you were to leave a couple of breeding pairs of kiwi to their own devices in the wild, itwould take a very long time for them to grow into a thriving population.

“UsingK hanga Kiwi, we now have a ready-made population of kiwi that can be gifted to areas where kiwi are locally extinct.

“In partnership with the team at Maungatautari, Ng ti Korokii Kahukura as the gifting iwi, andthe Capital Kiwi Project team, these 50 birds are an important step in restoring the country’swild kiwi population,” Michelle says.

The partnership between a largescale kiwibreeding programme and landscape-scale predatorcontrolled environments, including onprivate land, represented a significant paradigm shift in the approach to conservation, Capital Kiwi Project Founder, Paul Ward, says.

The 9 May release “demonstrates that the future of conserva- tion lies in genuine partnerships –between iwi, landowners, and local communities.

“The partnership with Save the Kiwimatches 24,000 hectares of predator-controlled kiwi habitat with the country’s mostambitious kiwi breeding programme.

“We’re looking forward to these kiwi getting settled in, and to continuing our work with Save the Kiwi to rapidly grow kiwi to abundance in the hills of our nation’s capital,” Paul says.

The Capital Kiwi Project is the community initiative to restore a large, wild population of kiwi across 24,000 hectares of mostly private land to the south and west of Wellington.

The largestcommunity trapping network in the country, comprising 4,500 stoat traps, has been operating across the landscape for the last five years to deliver an environment in which kiwi can thrive.

This month’s release of kiwi into the wild is the second to take place in Wellington. The Capital Kiwi Project released 13 kiwi in Makara on 19 November 2022.