Dogs kill kiwi in Hawke's Bay, Maungataniwha Native Forest

The Maungataniwha Native Forest in northern Hawke's Bay, the countryside where a pair of feral dogs are suspected to have roamed for the past six months. Photo / Supplied

One of New Zealand's most prolific kiwi conservation programmes says it fears a pair of feral dogs have been on a six-month killing spree on its land.

Dogs have mauled at least one kiwi and "probably more" in Hawke's Bay's Maungataniwha Native Forest south of Te Urewera, Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust says.

Two hounds killed a young female kiwi known as Orotikia in June.

Orotika came from an egg recovered in 2017 as part of the national Operation Nest Egg kiwi conservation initiative.

She was released into the Maungataniwha Native Forest in February 2018. The attack comes hot on the heels of a second dog-related death of a monitored kiwi in the Kaweka Forest Park in the past 12 months.

The two dogs at Maungataniwha were spotted by Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust staffer Barry Crene.

The trust's forest manager, Pete Shaw, said they match the description of animals seen in the Whirinaki Forest Park, some 30km away, late last year.

"If these are the same mutts then they've been killing and maiming our native wildlife for at least six months, probably even longer.

"Goodness knows what damage and carnage they've caused and how badly they've set back kiwi conservation efforts in this region."

The trust's Maungataniwha Kiwi Programme looks set to return more than 50 young birds to the forest this season.

Shaw said this effort could be negated completely by the damage caused by the dogs.

"They've been roaming feral through kiwi country for six months or more. It's entirely possible they've killed more birds than we've put back. It's heart-breaking."

The trust is calling for all dogs used for hunting to be chipped and trained for kiwi aversion.

"It's time for people who take their dogs into the bush to get serious about this stuff," Shaw said. "Taking unchipped, untrained dogs into the bush should be as socially unacceptable as drink-driving."

The mauled kiwi was found in an area where many of the trust's microchipped kiwi, from which it retrieves eggs for incubation, have their burrows.

Tagged kiwi make up only a small proportion of the birds that live in the area, which conservationists think now has a self-sustaining kiwi population base thanks to the success of the Maungataniwha Kiwi Programme.

Specially-trained species conservation dogs used to sniff out kiwi on the trust's Maungataniwha property in 2017 found a large proportion of unidentified adults, indicating that intensive and ongoing predator control efforts there are proving effective.

Thirty-eight adult birds were found there over a two-year period, of which 22 were not microchipped.