Kiwi Save
Seven years ago “with fewer than 100 to 200 kiwi left in the Kaweka Ranges and with kiwi effectively extinct south of Hawke’s Bay, it was time for action. A newly hatched Environment, Conservation and Outdoor Education Trust (ECOED) sprung into action. The Trust provided funding to ensure Hawke’s Bay school kids could experience a wide range of adventurous outdoor education coupled with learning about environmental issues through Community Conservation Programmes.
“Our first project was ‘Save our Kiwi Hawke’s Bay’, we were determined to prevent further decline in kiwi in Kaweka Forest Park,” said ECOED’s then General Manager, Alastair Bramley. One of their first wins was a Grant from Bank of New Zealand Save the Kiwi. It paid for catching and tagging wild kiwi so that local people could begin managing them back from the brink.
Just over two years later, ECOED and DOC commissioned kiwi expert Dr John McLennan to prepare a Hawke’s Bay/East Coast Kiwi Management Plan. John identified two main areas of concern, firstly that because the kiwi population was not dense enough in Kaweka Forest Park predator control was less economic than gathering eggs, incubating them off-site and then releasing chicks at a stoat-proof age. Secondly he identified that predator-proof fenced areas were needed with preferred sites being Opouahi (inland from Tutira), Cape Kidnappers and the Mahia Peninsula.
ECOED’s kiwi work was focused in three areas (a) Growing a core population of kiwi in Kaweka Forest Park (b) A crèche for kiwi chicks at Opouahi Scenic Reserve and (c) Exploring a proposal to make the whole of Mahia Peninsula predator-free. “We’re interested in Mahia Peninsula because it has been identified as an ideal site for raising kiwi and other endangered wildlife. It would only need a relatively short five-kilometre fence and would be relatively easy to defend against invading predators, as it’s surrounded by sea on three sides,” Alastair said.
If we can help the local community to make it happen, it will be the largest predator-free area on the New Zealand mainland. Thanks to all our major supporters, we are now actively managing our delicate Brown Kiwi population. And thanks to the combined efforts of our team, we have released a significant number of “stoat proof “ juveniles back into Kaweka Forest Park since we began in 2002,” he said.
The Environment, Conservation and Outdoor Education Trust was building a facility that would provide direct protection for kiwi at the Opouahi Kiwi Crèche in the Opouahi Scenic Reserve. The crèche would provide 40 hectares surrounded by a 3.3 kilometre fence. If Mahia Peninsula goes ahead, the local community and the Trust will make 20,000 hectares predator-free, creating the largest predator-free area on New Zealand’s mainland.
In August of 2007 Minister of Conservation, Chris Carter announced the acquisition of 36 hectares adjoining Opouahi Scenic Reserve in Hawke’s Bay and how this would boost volunteer efforts to protect kiwi and carry out other conservation work. Mr Carter and Hawke’s Bay Labour MP Russell Fairbrother visited the reserve on completion of the purchase from Landcorp Farming Ltd by the Government’s Nature Heritage Fund.
“Adding this land to the Opouahi Scenic Reserve will help the completion of an outdoor creche for young kiwi, a key part of a kiwi conservation programme in Hawke’s Bay,” he said. The acquisition of the land strengthens the area’s reputation as an outdoor and environmental education hub, with the Guthrie Smith Outdoor Education Centre and the Boundary Stream Mainland Island located just down the road. Seven hectares of the purchase will be included within the 40 ha predator-free area. The remaining 29 ha would be restored into native bush and made available to schools for environmental education.
The biggest threat facing kiwi and the biggest challenge facing his Trust is minimising the threat posed by domestic dogs and cats. “It’s very important to raise people’s awareness of what their family pet can do, and how dangerous they can be for kiwi, so that we can get them to change the way they manage these animals,” Alastair said at the time. “We need them to keep dogs on the leash, and tied up at night. And we need cats to be kept indoors at night. The survival of kiwi depends on it.”
For Alastair, the success of Save our Kiwi Hawke’s Bay is simple to identify. They have returned 46 juvenile kiwi to the wild, with no known losses to predators to date and 54 juvenile and adult kiwi are currently monitored. In 2005, the project was also the testing ground for the development of the new “Egg Timer” transmitter, which can detect whether a kiwi is incubating an egg and calculate the egg’s age. This would help kiwi workers identify the best time to remove the egg for artificial incubation as part of Operation Nest Egg.
At the time Alastair said the Egg Timer would significantly reduce the labour required, and therefore the cost of Operation Nest Egg, because it helped identify the best time to gather the egg – not too soon, not too late. In October last year the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council awarded ECOED Pan Pac Kiwi Creche the $500 Winner’s First prize for the development of Lake Opouahi as a safe kiwi breeding area.
In the Product/Service category Wildtech was a winner too for their ‘egg timer’ kiwi transmitter, a locally developed tool to assist kiwi breeding programmes. These Smart sensors that monitor kiwi behaviour in the bush are revolutionising efforts to track breeding birds and improving survival rates for chicks.
The innovative electronic ‘egg timers’ developed by Havelock North company Wildtech and the Department of Conservation are cutting the time needed for kiwi monitoring by up to a half in many kiwi projects. The timers accurately read how long a kiwi has been incubating an egg, meaning workers know exactly when to pick them up for safe hatching in incubators at facilities like Rotorua’s Kiwi Encounter at Rainbow Springs.
Wildtech has gone on to develop ‘chick timers’ which have recently been successfully trialled by DOC on the Coromandel Peninsula. Signals sent by the new device indicate when a chick has hatched so rangers know when to visit a nest to attach transmitters to the newborns or uplift them for raising in predator-free kiwi crèches. The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology provided funding to help with the research and development as did the Environment, Conservation & Outdoor Education Trust in Hawke’s Bay and DOC.
Alastair Bramley, a former outdoor education instructor and a Director of Wildtech became passionate about the plight of the North Island brown kiwi after voluntarily accompanying DOC staff on monitoring trips into the Kaweka Ranges five years ago. Male kiwi have been fitted with transmitters for some years but previous tracking techniques were time consuming and relied on educated guesses, said Mr Bramley.
“Workers would go into the bush every two weeks and monitor the birds at close range to determine when a male kiwi was beginning to sit on the nest, in order to work out the optimum time to pick up eggs. They’d return around 60 days into the 80 day incubation period, find the nest, monitor it and recover the eggs when the male got off the nest to feed.
A chance meeting through Playcentre with Wildtech’s other Director, John Wilks led to the two experimenting in a garage with improved technology based on understanding kiwi behaviour. They worked closely with Dr John McLennan, a leading kiwi ecologist who also lives in Havelock North. “The key was identifying the step change that indicates nesting which is when the male bird begins to spend a lot more time in the nest. We developed an intelligence of the activity sensor so that it could be used to distinguish different behaviours and alert us to those changes,” said Mr Bramley.
The transmitters the birds wear weigh just 25 grams and can be monitored from as far away as five kilometres, eliminating the need to monitor kiwi from close range. DOC trialled Wildtech’s smart transmitters two years ago and ‘egg timer’ transmitters have now become the standard technology in the field. DOC has also ensured widespread access to the new transmitters by owning the license for general use in New Zealand.
“I wouldn’t use anything else now,” says Jason Roxburgh, DOC’s Coromandel Kiwi Sanctuary Manager. “My team was run ragged by the demands of monitoring using the old techniques.” Mr Roxburgh’s team has also recently trialled Wildtech’s new ‘chick timers’ which he describes as ‘another massive leap forward’. “We attach transmitters to kiwi chicks so we can monitor their survival rates and evaluate the success of our predator control programme.
“The chick timers tell us precisely when the egg has hatched. This means we hassle the birds less as a result and reduce the risk of the male bird abandoning the nest if he knows it’s been disturbed. “It’s a time saver, a morale booster and reduces the risks associated with having staff working in rugged terrain at night.”
In the Kawekas, the Environment, Conservation & Outdoor Education Trust is using the chick timers to remove kiwi chicks from the nest when they are 10 to 20 days old and take them to the Pan Pac Kiwi Creche at Opouahi Scenic Reserve in northern Hawke’s Bay. Alastair Bramley says they are returned to their natural environment at around four to five months of age, when the risk of being killed by stoats is lower.
“We are letting the natural process run its course as much as possible and giving the kiwi chicks the benefit of whatever parenting happens in the first couple of weeks. It’s not a long term solution but it’s helping to build kiwi numbers fast,” he says. The trust has so far re-introduced 86 kiwi into the Kaweka Ranges. Wildtech’s smart transmitters have also been adapted for use in DOC programmes aimed at saving the endangered Rowi and Haast Tokoeka kiwi in the South Island. Mr Bramley says modifications have been made to dovetail the technology with different behaviour among species of kiwi.
The Bank of New Zealand Save the Kiwi Trust Executive Director Michelle Impey says devices like those developed by Wildtech are crucial to kiwi recovery. “The strategies we have been using are slowing the decline but that’s not good enough. We have to work smarter and faster over the next 10 years to actually reverse the trend. New technologies will be central to the success of that goal.” Kiwi Save, ABSOLUTELY!
