My Account
The Kaipara Kiwi sanctuary in Glorit has doubled its population of North Island brown kiwi from 40 to 80 and has plans to invest in better monitoring and protection hardware.
The sanctuary is an 18ha farm with pest-controlled native bush, founded by landowners Gill and Kevin Adshead in 2013.
Team member Sue Cameron said with numbers of kiwi soaring in the sanctuary, the birds had begun to spread out.
“A girl moved across a farm and into another bush, so we put out acoustic recorders to track her calls. Finally, this year, we heard a male respond so we now have a breeding pair in a satellite bush,” Sue says.
“This season, our champion dad, Francis, has successfully fledged two chicks and three more are on their way.”
But a growing population has brought an increasing need for more gear, including traps, monitoring cameras and specialised dogs.
Sue says feral cats are presenting an issue and a dog has been trained to find them. The dog will be used to figure out where the cats’ territories are so that they can be caught.
The importance of having monitoring cameras was recently made clear after an intruder was caught on film.
“We put a camera on a puddle where we had seen kiwi footprints. We got footage of a kiwi drinking, but then the next day we got a stoat drinking from the same spot,” Sue says.
To raise funds for expanded protection, Kaipara kiwi invited local artists to produce painted ceramic eggs, which were auctioned on Trade Me during October.
The works were made by emerging artists, including Warkworth’s Pauline Gough and Janette Cervin, and Matakana’s Vicki Fanning. The eggs have proven so popular that more may be produced to be sold later in the year.
Sue says the ultimate aim is for the Glorit kiwi population to be able to meet up with their cousins in Tawharanui by creating enough habitat connecting them. Sue is involved with the Forest Bridge Trust, which is creating a connected landscape of healthy forest from the Kaipara to the Pacific.
She says that the community in Glorit has got behind the sanctuary and has trained their dogs to avoid kiwi.
“Once a year in June we have a listening day, where we have members of the public with us in the freezing cold until 8pm listening out for kiwi calls. Acoustic recorders are good, but the human ear can pick direction a lot better, and it’s an awareness thing.”
