A success story
Clyde Graf’s opinion piece on kiwi releases from Maungatautari Sanctuary Mountain (The News, March 20) casts unfounded aspersions on efforts to protect brown kiwi. He is also ill-informed about the practice of taking kiwi eggs from the wild, raising the chicks in captivity and releasing them back to where they came from as strong, young adults, a practice known as Operation Nest Egg.
Clyde Graf
This is how more than 90 young kiwi were released into Okahu Valley in Te Urewera to boost and replenish the population. Without this method, unprotected kiwi populations are doomed to extinction from predation by mustelids.
The Tongariro kiwi population is far from a “disaster”. It is a large population with occasional set-backs such as incursions of ferrets from nearby farmland. With extra trapping for ferrets and stoats, and repeated aerial 1080 operations, the kiwi are successfully raising chicks. The number of kiwi calls per hour has gone from 1.1 per hour in 2011 to 4.5 per hour in 2023, the sign of a thriving population. Whio and other native wildlife have also benefitted from this predator control. More than 600 kiwi have been monitored through aerial1080 drops nationwide, and not one has died from 1080. Monitoring of birds transferred from Maungatautari is the responsibility of the Department of Conservation, not the Sanctuary.
Kiwi have flourished in predator-free Maungatautari. Now they are making a big contribution to the survival and re-introduction of kiwi all around the North island. A conservation success story.
Selwyn June
Hamilton
Letters to Editor. Photo: Pixabay
