Kakama leaves our Kiwi House

Kakama, the kiwi, is flying away today (Thursday 1^st June), but he won’t be using his own tiny wings. He will take an Air New Zealand flight from Whangarei to Palmerston North and will spend a few days in the care of Department of Conservation staff at the National Wildlife Centre before being released into the forest at Pukaha Mt. Bruce.

Hatched at Wellington Zoo, Kakama has been to the National Wildlife Centre before, spending about 2 years in the nocturnal house there when he was a juvenile. In 1993 he was moved to Whangarei where he has been living in the nocturnal enclosure of the Kiwi House at Whangarei Museum giving visitors an insight into kiwi life. At 16, Kakama is still young by kiwi standards which have a natural lifespan of 50 or more years.

In the forest at Pukaha Mt. Bruce he will be joining other kiwi bred in captivity in an attempt to re-establish kiwi where they have been absent for over 100 years. Pukaha Mt. Bruce is 942ha of primeval forest, a remnant of 70 Mile Bush which once stretched from Masterton to Norsewood. A forest restoration project is underway with a partnership between the Department of Conservation, Rangitaane o Wairarapa and the National Wildlife Centre Trust. With the support of the local community they are dedicated to protect the forest and its inhabitants from pests enabling kiwi, and other now rare birds, to once again flourish in their natural habitat for generations to come. Pest management has been carried out in the forest and will continue, and aided by the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils, in a 2700ha buffer zone around it. This not only benefits kiwi as kaka and kokako have also been reintroduced and are breeding well.

In other areas kiwi are not as lucky as the kiwi population is halving every decade in areas where pests are not being controlled. Without help, this rate of decline would mean that kiwi will be extinct on the mainland within a lifetime. The major cause of decline is mammalian predators that were introduced by people. Kiwi are only adapted to predation by other birds, not by mammals. Less than 5 out of every 100 kiwi chicks survive to adulthood; most of the others are killed by stoats, ferrets and cats. The major cause of death in adult kiwi is the domestic dog, pig dogs, farm dogs and pet dogs, ferrets can kill adult kiwi too, and in Northland quite a lot are killed on the roads.

Kakama was moved from the Kiwi House to an outside pen 2 months ago, so that he could get used to the day and night the right way round. The resident morepork accompanied him while the nocturnal enclosure was given a makeover, much to the consternation of the local bird population, who kept up a continuous loud chorus of alarm calls. After three days of hard work by staff and volunteers, and a generous donation of plants by Simon Vallings of Forest Floor Nurseries, the morepork returned to the nocturnal house with another kiwi, Manuiti. Manuiti is settling in well now that he has got used to the reversed day and night, an effect similar to jet-lag.

Kakama’s progress in the wild will be monitored; it is hoped that he and his offspring will flourish and that the nights will once again echo with their distinctive piercing calls.