The Kiwis bringing back the kiwi
The Capital Kiwi Project has been a collective effort from the community, landowners, Mākara locals, mana whenua, schools and even mountainbikers. Bess Manson and Erin Gourley talk to some of those who made it happen.
The inspiration for the Capital Kiwi Project, which has been pivotal in bringing the national bird back into the hills around the national capital today, came not from the ground but from the sky. Specifically from the return of the kākā to Wellington.
The cheeky native parrot was reintroduced to Wellington in 2002, when six kākā were released inside the Zealandia wildlife sanctuary. Fast forward a decade or so, and the parrots were soon breeding outside the predatorproof fence. By 2016, they were so numerous that Zealandia ceased its monitoring programme.
Now, it’s commonplace to see a kākā in your backyard if you live in Brooklyn or Wadestown – or further afield.
“It’s just extraordinary,” says Paul Ward, the force behind the Capital Kiwi Project. “Seeing a kākā flying above The Terrace! Walking down Courtenay Place, you can see the kākā ‘graffiti’ on the trees.
‘‘At 3am you probably have drunks and kākā hanging out together. It’s an image that would have been unimaginable until recently.”
The kākā success got Ward thinking: What about kiwi?
“We took that proposition and asked ‘Can kiwi live on our hills? Should they live on our hills?’ We had conversations with iwi, farmers, landowners and the answer was a unanimous ‘yeah’,” Ward says.
“That was 2017, and we just made the decision to go ahead and do it. We went out and presented [the idea] in woolsheds, in village halls. In the old Mākara church we rolled out the big map, and we asked the community if they were up for it and the answer was yes.”
So began the $4.5 million Capital Kiwi Project, funded by Predator Free 2050, Wellington Community Fund, Save the Kiwi, the Conservation Department and some supportive philanthropists. It marks its first big step today with the arrival of the first 13 kiwi.
Here are some of the people who made it happen:
Paul Ward, project lead
From the slopes above Oteranga Bay, Paul Ward surveys Shepherd’s Gully below.
Kiwi will roam down there, he says, gesturing to the 1000-plus
hectares of bush. Free to roam and multiply and eventually to wander over to our suburban borders.
Ward says the arrival of kiwi is a milestone for their mission: to return our taonga to our hills.
“When those birds come out of the burrows on their first night, when we hear those first calls, it’s hard to put into words how I’ll feel. It’s going to be pretty special to have collectively returned something to Wellington that we had been lost.
“I think back to my great-greatgreat-great-grandparents who would have heard kiwi, huia, kōkako, kākā in the night.”
Now, four generations later, it’s our turn, he says.
Ward, 47, has always been a bird man. He wears the badge of ‘‘bird nerd’’ with honour.
Growing up in Marton, he and his brother tagged along with their dad in duck-hunting season and hung out on farmland, absorbing nature. He was always on the lookout for his feathered friends.
His love of birds continued when the family moved to Johnsonville when he was 6, but native birds were elusive. There were no tūı¯, no kererū, no kārearea.
He remembers building a bird box in the gum tree at the back of
the garden. The starlings that nested in it were eaten by the family cat the first year. The following year he stopped the cat by wrapping an aluminium strip around the tree trunk. “I was learning about pest control and how to look after our taonga even back then.”
After stops at Victoria and Oxford universities, and stints at the Discovery Channel in the US and the Gibson Group in Wellington, he couldn’t shake the birds. “I’d have meetings with directors and increasingly I’d say things like ‘Would it make any difference if that character was a bird?’ ”
At the time Ward was part of the Ngā Kaimanaaki o Te Waimapihi (formerly known as the Polhill Protectors), a group who got together to trap pests and encourage native birdlife in Te Aro, Brooklyn and Highbury.
After four years’ hard slog by all involved, the release of the first 13 kiwi into the Wellington hills is momentous, but in some ways it’s just the beginning, says Ward.
The vision in the next five to 10 years is for the people of Wellington – especially in the western fringe of the city – to go to sleep at night hearing kiwi calling.
“We will be a city of kiwi guardians, and we will be deeply proud of that as Wellingtonians.”
Rawiri Walsh, iwi liaison for Capital Kiwi
Rawiri Walsh’s involvement with Capital Kiwi started with a chance meeting.
The environmentalist bumped into Paul Ward at a tree planting at Waimapihi River and the pair immediately hit it off. “We’re very like minded,” says Walsh (Taranaki Whānui, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Te ti Haunui a Pāpārangi, Ngā Rauru Kı¯tahi).
He has to tip his hat to Ward’s
powerful vision for the project. “[Taranaki Whānui] don’t have the national parks in Wellington that our Taranaki whanaunga do, so being able to bring that feel to the doors of the city is incredible.”
He’s been involved with Capital Kiwi for about three years, as a volunteer and now as iwi liaison for the project.
Following tikanga around moving kiwi from¯theO torohanga sanctuary required a tono (request) to Ngāti Hinewai, then an official handing-over to Taranaki Whānui. “Birds are a living animal, but they are also a taonga. There’s a process around ¯themA being moved,” he says.
Taranaki Whānui hosted Ngāti Hinewai at Waiwhetū Marae
yesterday for a pōwhiri to welcome them, ahead of the official kiwi handover today.
Walsh has experience with kiwi – he also sits as a trustee on the Taranaki Kiwi Trust, where kiwi are surviving in the wild through a different Operation Nest Egg approach. There, conservationists take kiwi eggs and incubate them to protect them from predators, and so the kiwi pairs will produce another.
‘‘Until recently the best way to grow kiwi numbers was on island sanctuaries,’’ he says.
But because of the resources required to incubate eggs and limited space in sanctuaries, he now believes getting kiwi to thrive in open, predator-free zones is ‘‘the
only way’’. The reduction in pests over large swaths of land in the Capital Kiwi project will help all native animals and plants to thrive, not just kiwi.
Walsh recalls the first time he interacted with kiwi. At first he did not understand what all the fuss was about, but once he held a kiwi he realised there was ‘‘something really special about it’’.
Everyone in Wellington talks about the return of tūı¯ to the city in the past 20 years. Now, kids are talking about how there used to be no kākā in their gardens. Walsh hopes the next generation will be amazed that Wellington used to have no kiwi. ‘‘It’s that simple.’’
Abby Wutzler, trapper
Abby Wutzler was still a toddler when she trapped her first pest. ‘‘I was sitting in my high chair when a mouse ran across it. My dad said ‘get it, get it’. And I got it with my little baby hands.’’
Born and bred in Mākara, the 23-year-old grew up hunting and trapping with her father, David. The pair, who have been on the Capital Kiwi project for two years, have been reviving the land and trapping ever since she can remember.
She moved to the city for a few years when she was 17, but she hated it and soon went home.
Wutzler goes out trapping several days a month as a volunteer for Capital Kiwi, travelling the route, from the beach at Mākara to Johnsonville, on an electric motorbike over farmland, through bush.
They’re good days out there with Lisa, her bitzer huntaway cross, who has just completed her kiwi aversion training.
‘‘When I’m out there with Lisa in the bush all day, I just stop and smell the roses, admire the landscape,’’ Wutzler says.
‘‘Even though I’ve walked that trail more than 100 times there is always something new to see. The birds, the bugs and foliage – New Zealand always has something new to reveal to you if you stop and look for long enough. It’s beautiful.’’
Those trails, the bush and estuary – she knows those places like the back of her hand. It was all part of her playground as a kid.
Her interest in the environment and preserving it comes from her days at Mākara Model School, her work with local conservation group the Mākaracarpas, but most of all her father.
She’s never clapped eyes on a kiwi, so seeing them released at Terawhiti Station will be pretty special, she says. ‘‘Like Christmas.’’
Wutzler hopes there will be a time she’ll see kiwi around her neighbourhood. Maybe poking around the backyard.
‘‘It seems like a future that I can’t imagine but hopefully one that will be achieved. ‘‘We are all responsible for the disappearance of these birds. It’s our responsibility to correct the wrongs of our ancestors. We need to bring New Zealand back to life.’’
Louise Askin, a ‘Mākaracarpa’
Louise Askin has been a Mākaracarpa for about seven years. The Mākaracarpas Society formed 14 years ago to do restoration work around the Mākara Estuary – taking away rubbish, planting natives, fencing out livestock – and, more recently, in predator control.
They have helped spread the good word of the Capital Kiwi Project, running information sessions and encouraging locals to join the trapping work.
Askin, who has worked with neighbours across Mākara and
hāriu planting for biodiversity and water quality, says the community’s enthusiasm for the kiwi project has been huge.
‘‘Mākara is quite an eclectic community – farmers, people on lifestyle blocks, in corporate jobs, fishermen and women, artists, hunters, 4-wheel drivers. This is the kind of project that has brought people together in a shared enthusiasm and engagement.
‘‘It crosses age groups, from 5-year-olds at Mākara Model School to the oldest residents like 94-year-old Ted Smith,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s been a uniting project.’’
She grew up in South Karori and as a teenager would hunt in an area that backs on to Zealandia wondering if there were any kiwi poking around that no-one knew about.
‘‘Now that could be a reality where we live. It’s really exciting that one day my two young daughters will hear the call of the kiwi from our backyard.’’
Ted Smith, Mākara resident
Ted Smith has been eagerly watching the rollout of the Capital Kiwi project. The 94-year-old nature enthusiast is determined to see kiwi thrive at Mākara in his lifetime.
He’s passionate about nature and has been involved in nature projects in the area, like cleaning wetlands and waterways and restoring native bush. There’s even a waterfall nearby which locals have named ‘‘Ted’s Falls’’ after him.
Smith was thrilled about the Capital Kiwi project as soon as he learned of it.
As someone who has volunteered for nature projects all his life, he knew immediately that it would be a ‘‘major task’’ and trapping predators would be ongoing work.
‘‘Four years ago they started the big task of trying to eradicate
the predators.’’ Smith
was there, laying the first trap. It was even less straightforward than he thought – each kiwi pair needs a lot of land to live, as they are territorial birds, ‘‘like tūı¯’’.
‘‘It will be great to have kiwi back. It would be better still to get rid of all these introduced predators. Possums have got to go, they’re destroying the forest.’’
Smith built his home in Mākara in the 1950s and had been visiting since he was just four years old. The place has changed immensely, he says.
In the last 20 years Mākara locals have had increasing numbers of tūı¯ and kererū visiting their gardens thanks to Zealandia. But it had never crossed Smith’s mind that kiwi might return.
‘‘I never
thought it would happen. It’s a very bold move.’’
Michael Grace, landowner
Terawhiti Station has been in Michael Grace’s family for almost 175 years. His ancestor, Irish settler James McMenamen, started farming on Tongue Point in 1847.
He would probably be ‘‘turning in his grave’’ to know that they were letting parts of the farmland regenerate as native bush, Grace says.
‘‘Those were different times and they were trying to make a dollar for their family. Now we have a different view.’’
There were kiwi on the land when McMenamen arrived there. With Grace and his family’s approval, kiwi will soon be released on to the land again.
‘‘The station has a long history and the reintroduction of kiwi is another exciting chapter . . . Each generation should want to leave the environment in a better place than they inherited it.’’
Grace is the owner and director of the station, which encompasses 13,000 acres of land out to Tongue Point, overlooking Cook Strait.
He was first approached by Paul
Ward about the Capital Kiwi project just over four years ago, and they started to look into whether kiwi could be released on Terawhiti Station. At the time, he thought: ‘‘That’s exciting, but it sounded a bit crazy.’’
Like many of us, he thought kiwi needed native bush to thrive and survive. Terawhiti Station has scrubland, sheep, goats, wind turbines and power lines, and it wasn’t pest free. ‘‘It wasn’t what you would understand as being a pristine environment for kiwi to live in.’’
Paul ‘‘Scratch’’ Jansen explained to them that the landscape was ‘‘completely suitable’’ and that kiwi were ‘‘hardy animals’’.
The station was the ideal location to release the kiwi because it is a large stretch of land far from the city and far from the pests which prey on kiwi. This gave them enough distance from predators like dogs, who go ‘‘crazy’’ for kiwi.
The first stage of the project was to get rid of the stoats from the area, with Capital Kiwi volunteers setting a ‘‘helluva lot’’ of traps all the way to Porirua. A lot of ‘‘manpower’’ was required, says Grace. ‘‘The prospect of having kiwi return where we haven’t had them for 100 years is exciting but there are all these obstacles. You think that isn’t going to work.’’
In a way, reintroducing kiwi on the farm is a silver lining. A financially rough period for the farm in the 90s meant they needed to downsize and return some of the land to native bush. ‘‘We wouldn’t have been proud at the time, but that’s life and things evolve. It’s a benefit to the station now.’’
Paul ‘Scratch’ Jansen, key adviser
Paul ‘‘Scratch’’ Jansen’s earliest memory, captured in a colour slide, was of seeing a kiwi on public display in Napier. No-one else is paying a lot of interest to the flightless bird poking around its enclosure, but the young Scratch was leaning over the fence with a look of awe.
As a kid, he was fascinated by birds of any feather. Not much has changed. He’s made birds and the preservation of the more vulnerable species his life’s work.
At 18, Jansen secured a traineeship with the Wildlife Service and became part of its mobile labour force. It was remote work planting and trapping in the deepest, darkest parts of New Zealand, from the bush in Fiordland and the backblocks of Stewart Island to the Chathams and Pitt Island.
He’s spent his entire career working to preserve our precious wildlife, from the kōkako and black robin to the kākāpō. But he’s always had a soft spot for kiwi.
Once you get involved with this bird, it’s a commitment for life, he says. Kiwi are like a drug. Once you have a close encounter with one, you develop a taste for it.
He’s spent years talking to conservation groups about preserving our national bird. ‘‘I’m like a drug dealer who goes out there and says ‘what about kiwi?’ and then they’re hooked.
‘‘I feel guilty when I turn up to these places 20 years later, and I see the same people, older and greyer, and they’re still doing the mahi because they ‘got kiwi’ and they’re not going to give up.’’
Jansen, who was key in founding Predator Free New Zealand 2050, believes the backing of the community for the Capital Kiwi project says a lot about this generation. He calls it ‘‘the David Attenborough generation’’.
After all those years in the back of beyond looking after the kiwi population, he can now envisage the birds in our suburban backyards.
Kiwi will live almost anywhere, he says. ‘‘We know that they walk into houses in Kerikeri and drink the milk residents leave out for them.
‘‘In Stewart Island, kiwi roam around the community poking holes into the rugby grounds looking for worms ever since the community started keeping their dogs in at night.
‘‘To have kiwi at our suburban borders, in backyards, rather than just in the back of beyond, or in enclosures – living with nature on our doorstep, that would be a pretty good turnout.’’
In the next 10 years Karori residents should leave their ranch sliders open in the evening, he says. They might find a late-night feathered visitor.
Capital Kiwi project adviser Paul ‘‘Scratch’’ Jansen in the bush at Waimapihi Reserve.