Kiwis to be reintroduced to New Zealand capital for first time in a century

Ancient, flightless, nocturnal birds have been absent from Wellington for more than a century

Eleanor Ainge Roy in Dunedin

Tue 13 Nov 2018 02.01 GMTLast modified on Tue 13 Nov 2018 02.55 GMT

Wellington could soon have kiwis nesting beside Parliament House thanks to an ambitious conservation project that aims to reintroduce the country’s iconic national bird to the capital city within the next decade.

There are 68,000 kiwi left in New Zealand but the number of birds are declining at a rate of 2% per year. A century ago, there were millions but attacks by dogs, cats, possums, stoats and rats have led to huge population decline.

The ancient, flightless, nocturnal birds have been absent from Wellington for more than a century, but after extensive predator-trapping by the council and as part of the country’s predator-free 2050 goal, conservationists believe Wellington is ripe for a reintroduction of the shy national bird, which few New Zealanders have ever seen in the wild.

“I would love to be woken by the sound of kiwi,” said Wellington mayor Justin Lester, who has been a strong proponent of predator control in the city, which sees school children set traps on school grounds, and mountain bikers check and set traps in rural areas.

Under the program, which is being coordinated by a consortium of conservation groups, 20,000 hectares of public and private land surrounding Wellington will be targeted with intensive trapping over the next three years to begin the reintroduction of kiwi.

Continued  

Kiwi birds are going blind

26 Sep, 2017 7:52am

NZ Herald

Natural evolution could be making New Zealand's iconic bird blind as its natural habitat and way of life renders sight unnecessary for survival.

Three kiwi have been found to be profoundly blind in a South Island forest and an article in the New Scientist has suggested this could be an indication the flightless nocturnal birds may be evolving to lose their eyesight.

A study of 160 Okarito brown kiwi in the Okarito forest in New Zealand's South Island found a "very high prevalence of birds with eye lesions".

Te Papa Museum researcher Alan Tennyson said a third of the birds had eye problems.

The three completely blind birds had no other clear physical problems.

Tennyson said no other birds were known to have a free-living population of blind members.

However, he told the New Scientist, plenty of other animals such as moles and cave-dwelling fish, have evolved blindness.

"Vision is not essential for survival in all animals."

He said the most likely explanation the kiwi were becoming blind was because of where and how they lived.

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Rarest kiwis released into the wild as numbers double in 15 years

A successful project to save New Zealand's rarest kiwi species-the rowi-from extinction, has enabled New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC) to return another 9 young birds to Ōkārito forest.

One of New Zealand's species recovery success stories, the rowi has been brought back from a population low of fewer than 200 birds in 1998 to nearly 400 birds today.

"The doubling of the population has been thanks to a blend of old-fashioned hard work and new techniques and technology-including a ground-breaking aerial tracking system called Sky Ranger." says Cornelia Vervoorn, community relations ranger with DOC.

Stoat problem
"If these birds had been left in the wild, there is a 95% chance that they would have been killed by stoats soon after hatching. However, as part of BNZ Operation Nest Egg, DOC rangers rescued the eggs before they hatched and took them to the West Coast Wildlife Centre in Franz Josef. They were incubated and hatched in the centre's husbandry unit before being taken to predator-free Motuara Island in the Marlborough Sounds. Now that the chicks have grown up and are strong enough to repel stoat attacks, they are completing their journey and being released back into the Ōkārito Kiwi Sanctuary."

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/rowi.html