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The kiwi, New Zealand\u2019s sacred national bird, vanished from the hills around Wellington more than a century ago. Now the capital’s residents are waging an improbable citizen campaign to return the endangered flightless birds to the city.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey are a part of who we are and our sense of belonging here,\u201d says Paul Ward, founder of the Capital Kiwi Project, a charitable trust. \u201cBut they\u2019ve been gone from these hills for well over a century and we decided as Wellingtonians that wasn\u2019t right.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a hill wreathed in mist above the dark sea that runs between New Zealand\u2019s North and South Islands, Ward and others crossed rugged farmland late on Tuesday night, carrying seven crates in silence by dim red torchlight. Inside each one nestled a kiwi, including the 250th bird relocated to Wellington since the Capital Kiwi Project began.<\/p>\n
Birds receive a quiet welcome to new homes<\/p>\n
The kiwi gives New Zealanders the name by which they\u2019re often known. It\u2019s a shy and odd-looking bird with underdeveloped wings and a whiskery face.<\/p>\n
Spiritually significant for many New Zealanders, the kiwi\u2019s image appears everywhere, including on the tail of the country\u2019s air force planes \u2013 curious for a bird with no tail which can\u2019t fly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s thought that there were 12 million of the birds roaming the landscape before humans arrived in New Zealand<\/a>. Today only about 70,000 kiwi are left across the country, with the population dropping two per cent each year.<\/p>\n In the hills where Wellington\u2019s kiwi now live and breed, the only late-night sound on 28 April was the whoosh of wind turbines. Ward and his friends set their crates down in pairs, slid them open and gently tilted the boxes.<\/p>\n Some in the small group of hushed onlookers were tearful. One man chanted a karakia, a M\u0101ori prayer.<\/p>\n From each crate, a long, curved beak eventually protruded as kiwi took their first tentative steps into the shadowed landscape, then sped to a run and disappeared into the darkness.<\/p>\n Kiwi make their first Parliament visit<\/p>\n One place kiwi had never set foot until this week was inside New Zealand\u2019s Parliament. Hours before Wellington\u2019s seven newest residents were transported to their hillside home, they were carried into Parliament\u2019s grand banquet hall by handlers for a celebration of the 250th kiwi’s arrival in the city.<\/p>\n Lawmakers and schoolchildren alike expressed whispered delight at seeing the timid, nocturnal birds up close, many for the first time, as conservation workers cradled the large birds like human babies, with their gnarled feet outstretched.<\/p>\n \u201cThis animal has given us as a people so much in terms of our sense of identity<\/a>,\u201d Ward told The Associated Press. \u201cWe want to challenge our civic leaders, our politicians and say this is a relationship we need to honour.\u201d<\/p>\n Rare birds move from sanctuaries to urban life<\/p>\n New Zealand is home to some of the world\u2019s strangest and rarest bird species<\/a>. Some have only survived because of against-all-odds conservation programs, at times with uncertain funding.<\/p>\n Initiatives decades ago saw all surviving birds of some species moved onto offshore, predator-free islands<\/a> or into sanctuaries where they could be carefully monitored and protected, but where few New Zealanders would ever see one.<\/p>\n Ward and his group had a different dream: that New Zealand\u2019s iconic national bird could flourish alongside people in a bustling capital city, where human encroachment and introduced predators had wiped out the kiwi before.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere people are is also the places where we can bring them back because we\u2019ve got the means to do that guardianship,\u201d Ward says.<\/p>\n Thousands of traps protect capital\u2019s kiwi<\/p>\n Although unmanaged kiwi populations are shrinking, their numbers have thrived in carefully managed wild bird sanctuaries \u2013 so much, in fact, that some of these protected areas have run out of room for them.<\/p>\n That\u2019s prompted their relocation to places like Wellington, where groups such as Ward\u2019s rally residents to embrace their new neighbours. Kiwi have been spotted by late night mountain bikers and on backyard security camera footage in the capital, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re living and calling and being encountered on the hills surrounding our city,\u201d says Ward.<\/p>\n That’s taken work. Over the past decade, efforts between landowners, the local M\u0101ori tribe and the Capital Kiwi Project have produced a sprawling, 24,000-hectare tract of land where kiwi can roam.<\/p>\n It\u2019s dotted with more than 5,000 traps for stoats, the main predator of kiwi chicks. So far, the Wellington population has a 90 per cent chick survival rate.<\/p>\n New Zealand aims to become predator free<\/p>\n The kiwi initiative is part of New Zealand\u2019s quest to rid the island nation of introduced predators, including feral cats, possums, rats and stoats, by the year 2050. Since a previous government established the target in 2016 its chances of success have been debated, but community groups have taken up the work in earnest.<\/p>\n Parts of Wellington are now entirely free of mammalian predators apart from household pets, and native birds<\/a> flourish. Volunteers monitor suburbs with military precision for the appearance of a single rat.<\/p>\n