Festival disturbs kiwi breeding
HAVING a loud music festival just over the fence from where rare birds were breeding was ‘‘terrible timing’’, Kiwi Park’s wildlife manager Al Browne said.
Attracting a crowd of about 5000, Snow Machine ran over three nights last week on the Queenstown Primary School grounds.
Its amplified music could be heard for several kilometres away.
Mr Browne said during Thursday’s sound check, they removed two kiwi eggs male birds had been incubating just 10m15m from the main stage.
‘‘I heard that [sound] and thought, ‘no way, I’m absolutely not going to take that risk’ . . . Large noises and things like that can cause your male to panic and break the eggs himself.
‘‘We’ve got space on site to artificially incubate them.’’
Mr Browne said ideally they would have waited another month before removing the eggs, or about a month before they were due to hatch.
‘‘The longer you leave them, the higher the chance of success’’.
Ironically, kiwi were originally housed near Skyline’s gondola, but were relocated due to that company’s redevelopment work.
Mr Browne said it was not just their kiwi that were affected.
‘‘About half of our species are just starting to lay eggs and incubate.
‘‘We saw quite a lot of stress around the park from birds — increased aggression, pacing, things like that.’’
Festival director Quentin Nolan said he had been in constant communication with Kiwi Park’s owners.
‘‘I provided detail on the event, the site maps and the acoustic report, and we got affected party approval signed by them.
‘‘They asked us not to do sound checks while they were doing shows, and they asked us to put a security guard in the park to make sure there were no fence jumpers or anything.’’
Mr Nolan said he was making a $2000 donation to the park and would like to work with them if the event was held there again.
Mr Nolan believed their noise level was within consented limits.
Queenstown Lakes District Council spokesman Sam White said the council received 18 noise complaints from 10 individuals.