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Another productive kiwi breeding season (Q4 2024 – Q2 2025) saw a leading conservation trust return 75 juvenile kiwi to the bush, bringing its total tally to 769 since 2006.
Hawke’s Bay-based Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust delivered 84 viable eggs this season to the National Kiwi Hatchery in Rotorua, the Gallagher Kiwi Burrow near Taupō and a Save the Kiwi facility near Napier as part of the national Operation Nest Egg conservation drive.
It collected the eggs from its property in the Maungataniwha Native Forest, adjacent to Te Urewera. After hatching, the resulting chicks were sent to predator-proof enclosures known as kiwi crèches, where they were looked after until they had grown to a kilogram in weight.
This is the size they need to be to effectively defend themselves from stoats, one of the worst predators of young kiwi.
Juvenile kiwi hatching in forests with no predator protection in place have only a five percent chance of making it to adulthood. The survival rate of crèched kiwi far exceeds this; the Trust was able to return to the bush 75 birds from the 84 eggs it collected (89 per cent).
It returned 58 to the Maungataniwha Native Forest from where the eggs were collected, and 17 to its adjacent property, Pohokura, mid-way between Taupo and Napier. This supports the long-term goal of the national Kiwi Recovery Plan; to reach 100,000 kiwi by 2030 through growing populations of all kiwi species by at least two percent a year, restoring them to their former distribution and maintaining their genetic diversity.
The Trust has invested significantly in extensive predator control at Maungataniwha. The kiwi population there is now deemed ‘viable’. A viable kiwi population is one that is large enough to grow meaningfully and increase naturally with predator control in place. Young kiwi chicks have been found there, indicating that the birds in that population are benefiting from predator control work and breeding successfully.
Since 2019 the Trust has been using juveniles sourced as eggs from Maungataniwha to re-establish a viable kiwi population on its neighbouring property, Pohokura. At that stage there was a remnant population of “a handful” of birds on the 11,400 ha property and the Trust says it wants to introduce at least 200 kiwi by 2024. That target was reached a year earlier than planned.
Chairman Simon Hall says he hopes Pohokura would ultimately help re-populate neighbouring areas with kiwi.
“Just as Maungataniwha can now be the source of kiwi to re-stock Pohokura, so we hope that ultimately Pohokura kiwi will make their way naturally to neighbouring areas such as the Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne Conservation Park, which is also being made safe for them by Ngāti Whare and the Department of Conservation.”
This, along with Maungataniwha, Pohokura, privately-owned Ngatapa Station and the Waipunga Conservation Area, forms a contiguous 100,000 ha swathe of the central North Island where kiwi conservation is a priority.
Simon says the trust’s work with kiwi could not happen without the help and investment from its conservation partners, particularly the Cape Sanctuary, the National Kiwi Hatchery and its funder Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Pahauwera, the Department of Conservation and Save the Kiwi, the only national charity dedicated to protecting kiwi.
He paid tribute to the immense amount of time and effort put into kiwi conservation by experts and enthusiasts from all walks of life.
“We are truly lucky to have this community, and that’s exactly what it is, of people who are prepared to walk the extra mile or two, literally through thick bush and icy-cold rivers, to ensure that we reverse the decline towards extinction of our national icon,” he says.
In addition to thev Maungataniwha Kiwi Project the Trust runs a series of native flora and fauna regeneration projects. These include a drive to increase the wild-grown population of Kakabeak (Clianthus maximus), an extremely rare type of shrub, and the re-establishment of native plants and forest on 4000 hectares currently, or until recently, under pine.
