The Australia Letter is a weekly e-newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week’s concern is written by Pete McKenzie, a reporter based mostly in Auckland, New Zealand.
Capturing a kiwi is tougher than I anticipated. Regardless of standing simply two toes tall, an grownup fowl is armed with pistonlike legs and razor-sharp claws. And, in accordance with Will Kahu, a ranger with the conservation group Save the Kiwi, “They’re surprisingly feisty.”
He recalled one standoff that ended with a kiwi leaping by means of the air, kicking him within the chest and sprinting off whereas he tumbled to the bottom.
Which is how I discovered myself squatting safely atop a fallen tree in Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, a fenced-in nature reserve on New Zealand’s North Island, whereas Mr. Kahu and several other volunteers extracted a fowl from its burrow within the rotting trunk beneath me.
“One leg, two legs — received it,” Dave Laithwaite, a volunteer on the sanctuary, mentioned whereas groping round within the mud within the kiwi’s slender den. He pulled the writhing fowl out, then calmed it by cradling it like a child.
The kiwi, New Zealand’s nationwide fowl, has seen a resurgence in numbers due to conservation efforts. In 2005, a number of kiwis had been positioned within the Maungatautari sanctuary in a last-ditch effort to forestall them from being hunted to extinction by predators like stoats and ferrets.
Now, greater than 2,500 of the fiercely territorial birds reside on Sanctuary Mountain, which is shortly working out of house for them. To alleviate the stress, conservationists caught and exported 209 kiwis to new houses throughout the nation final week.
“It’s the largest kiwi translocation ever,” Mr. Kahu mentioned.
“My feeling is of celebration,” mentioned Bodie Taylor, a consultant of an Indigenous tribe that helps run Sanctuary Mountain. “To listen to them tangi” — cry — “and see them working free, it opens your coronary heart.”
Most outstanding is the way in which these flightless birds are being moved: by airplane.
After the hunt, I drove to Waikato Airport behind a van filled with squeaking birds.
“We’re right here for the Sanctuary Mountain flight,” Steven Cox, a conservation ranger, mentioned to an airport receptionist once we arrived.
The receptionist requested what the cargo was.
“Kiwi,” Mr. Cox mentioned. The receptionist mentioned she’d name over her supervisor.
Exterior, two planes from an aeronautics membership in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, taxied throughout a runway. Conservationists favor to move kiwis by airplane when relocating them throughout lengthy distances to attenuate journey time and stress on the birds.
“It’s fairly cool,” Kai Furst-Jaeger, the pilot, mentioned as he helped load the birds onto the planes. “I didn’t suppose I’d get to deal with kiwi in my lifetime.”
There have been as soon as 12 million kiwis in New Zealand, however the species was devastated after people launched predators like ferrets, rats and stoats. In areas with predators, lower than 10 p.c of hatchlings survive six months. Roughly 70,000 birds belonging to 5 species stay, principally in fenced-in reserves or on distant islands.
However intensive efforts by authorities rangers, volunteer trappers and conservationists at refuges like Sanctuary Mountain have propelled the expansion of some kiwi species. The species at Sanctuary Mountain, the North Island brown kiwi, is predicted to see its inhabitants improve by 10 p.c over the subsequent three generations.
That’s permitting conservationists to take dangers: the birds from Sanctuary Mountain are going to reserves that aren’t fenced in. Whereas trapping has eradicated most predators at these reserves, the kiwis there nonetheless face risks.
“We all know some kiwi could die within the wild, however we’ve got to construct massive populations with resilience,” mentioned Michelle Chicken, a coordinator for Save The Kiwi. “We’re trying on the inhabitants degree.”
I hopped into an plane full of six birds. As we rattled down the runway, I solid a apprehensive eye on the crates.
“It should be a bizarre expertise for them,” I mentioned.
“Yeah, I hear flying isn’t their robust go well with,” Chris Forbes, the pilot, joked. He advised me he laughed when Wellington Aero Membership requested for volunteers to assist flightless kiwis soar.
We flew between the snow-capped mountains of Ruapehu and Taranaki, then adopted the shoreline previous Kapiti Island to Wellington. Beneath us lay sprawling fields with occasional cities and roadways: a panorama that has modified dramatically since kiwis roamed freely a number of centuries in the past, when a lot of the land was native forest.
“I’ve heard no squawks from the kiwi,” Mr. Forbes mentioned as we approached Wellington.
“I suppose that’s a great signal,” I replied.
We touched down easily, then pulled right into a warehouse the place half a dozen volunteers had been ready. Inside minutes, the crates had been loaded into a number of automobiles and on their strategy to the town’s western edge, the place the conservation group Capital Kiwi has spent 5 years establishing a predator-free zone. After being reintroduced into the realm in 2022, the kiwi bred there for the primary time in dwelling reminiscence.
Now, Sanctuary Mountain has despatched 100 of the birds to the realm to supercharge Wellington’s rising kiwi inhabitants. As night time fell, we unloaded the crates on the Karori Golf Course, which lies on the foot of the predator-free space. On the final gap, a tribal consultant launched a kiwi right into a stand of native bush. Because the kiwi scurried away, a local owl hooted within the starlight.
“It supplies hope,” Ms. Chicken mentioned of the kiwi switch. “And hope is vital.”
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