New Zealanders band together to help save their kiwis

While known for their love of flat whites and their passion for the arts, a new pastime is rapidly growing in the NZ capital and around the country.

People are assembling and setting traps for rats, stoats and other predators in their backyards.

It’s a somewhat unlikely hobby, but in Wellington alone there are more than 70 community groups involved in pest management. All aim to make their home town the first predator-free capital city in the world and a paradise for native birds such as the tieke (saddleback), hihi (stitchbird), kaka, kakariki and toutouwai (North Island robin). 

Ever since conservation project Zealandia created a fully-fenced 225-hectare ecosanctuary within the city limits in 1999, native birdlife has returned to many suburbs and Wellingtonians have embraced their avian friends.

The groups are part of a groundswell of community conservation initiatives sweeping NZ and delivering fantastic results.

Kiwis, flightless birds with hair-like feathers and chopstick bills, have been absent from Wellington for more than a century due to the loss of their habitat and the spread of predators.

Now the ambitious project Capital Kiwi hopes to lure kiwi back to the Wellington region within the next decade. About 4400 traps will be set on 23,000 hectares of public and private land stretching from the outskirts of town to the coast. 

As long as stoats, ferrets and weasels are around, kiwi chicks have hardly any chance of surviving their first year. An average of 27 kiwi are killed by predators each day according to charity Kiwis for kiwi, which supports community-led initiatives around the country. It warns that at this rate kiwi may disappear from the mainland in our lifetime. 

But projects in Rakiura/Stewart Island in the south of New Zealand, Whangarei Heads in the north and Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty have shown that with community involvement as kaitiaki (guardians) it is possible to grow a wild kiwi population. 

Ninety-year-old Ted Smith, who lives in the small seaside settlement of Makara, just over the hills from Wellington, helped kick off the project by setting the first trap in November.

“If we allow kiwi to die out then we deserve to be called idiots," he said.

If the eradication of predators proves successful after three years, the Department of Conservation will look at translocating kiwi to the hillsides. 

The hope is that in less than a decade, tourists will be able to post their kiwi encounters on the outskirts of Wellington on social media, and locals will beam with pride at hearing the shrill call of the country’s iconic birds in their backyards. 

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