At home with the kiwi

A kiwi takes a well earned break from the spotlight after a busy day at Mataia farm on Kaipara Harbour.

A number of Federated Farmers staff were brought up on farms, and I count myself lucky to be one of that number.

The farm I grew up on, Mataia, has been my family's "home" since the late 1860s, being currently owned by myself and my two sisters.

We expanded it in the late 1980s to around 1300ha, of which some 800ha is productive, a mixture of rolling hills and marine flats.

It is coastal and fronts the Kaipara Harbour. Although it is easy country, like much of Northland the heavy soils mean it gets particularly dry in summer and very wet in winter.

Another 400 hectares is made up largely of coastal native forest margin and saltmarsh wetland, the area boasts rare populations of Fernbird and Banded Rail and is host to a large number of other native bird species.

It is a significant roosting ground for arctic waders including Godwits and Lesser knots as well as local migrants including Pied oystercatchers, Pied stilts, Banded dotterel and Caspian terns. Part of the area was already protected under a QEII National Trust covenant.

Much of the area had been used for rough grazing in the dry periods, but about 10 years ago we made the decision to close it all off permanently, and instigate an intensive pest control programme.

With funding from the Department of Conservation, the Auckland Council and the family, the restoration of this area became a long-term project aimed at restoring and enhancing the considerable ecological values of the area.

With the help of community volunteers and local schools we now plant about 4000 native trees a year on the farm.

However, all along we have been mindful that the "Mataia Restoration Project" has to fit into a working and profitable sheep and beef farm, a part of which is currently being converted to dairying, in conjunction with a neighbour.

Much of the work was done by my sister Gillian and her husband Kevin Adshead, who long held a dream of returning kiwi to the area. We had to reduce the number of stoats, feral cats, rats and possums to a level where kiwis can live and breed safely, and we had to erect some eight kilometres of shade cloth fencing around the entire boundary of the property to keep kiwis inside the pest-controlled area.

In May last year, in conjunction with the Kiwis for Kiwis programme, we had our first release of eight kiwi, brought over from the breeding programme on Moturoa Island.

By early this year, the success of the first release was evident, with at least one kiwi chick having been born, and we had a further release of some kiwi in April.

This was a more high-profile event, and we were honoured to have the Prime Minister in attendance, together with some Kiwis for Kiwis programme board members, sponsors and ambassadors, and some 500 other guests. Local iwi Ngati Whatua O Kaipara welcomed the visitors and the new kiwi with a powhiri, with local school children marking each speech of the welcome with a waiata.

Having the Prime Minister at the latest event was great but what stood out to us was the way the community turned out. It was a genuine community day and a celebration of how farming and conservation are flipsides of the same coin.

Our target is to have a founder population of around 40 kiwi on the farm. We'll be pretty close to that with this latest kiwi release.