Bring back kiwis begins
A massive effort to bring kiwi back to Wellington has begun with the first trap being set in the ground in Makara.
The plan is being welcomed by 90-year-old Makara resident Ted Smith, who hit the first trap’s stake into the ground at Terawhiti Station, on the capital’s south coast, yesterday.
Smith, who was born in Karori, said it could be done, and he wanted pests gone.
‘‘All the predators we have have been introduced to this country, and I think we should now ask them to leave.’’
Smith had explored Makara for about 80 years and wanted to see kiwi in his backyard.
‘‘It’s going to require a lot of work and effort from a lot of people, and it’s going to take time, but it can be done.’’
Smith, with other landowners and members of the trapping community, gathered at the blustery farm to see the first trap prepared – a self-resetting Goodnature A24 trap, manufactured in Newtown.
It’s the first of 4400 traps to be set across 23,000 hectares in Wellington by next winter.
Capital Kiwi has three years to eradicate mustelids (stoats, weasels and ferrets), and then the Department of Conservation could approve the release of kiwi.
Project founder Paul Ward said mustelids were ‘‘the No 1 threat to our young kiwis’ housing crisis’’.
Ward said New Zealanders called themselves, their money, and some sports teams ‘‘kiwis’’.
‘‘Like the birds we’re feisty, shy, tough and just a little bit weird.’’
But few had seen the kiwi themselves, and it wasn’t right, he said, adding more tourists than Kiwis had seen kiwi, and if Kiwis had seen their namesake, it was probably in a zoo. ‘‘What are we going to do if we can’t look after these guys? We’re going to have to turn KiwiBank to Rat Bank.’’
The partnership between landowners, iwi, community groups, councils, the Conservation Department, Goodnature and Meridian was an ‘‘unprecedented community consensus’’. Their vision was to have Makara a kiwi heartland, to have the birds wandering around the wind turbines or Mt Kaukau, and Karori and Island Bay residents getting a kiwi dawn chorus.