Nine kiwi killed at sanctuary in month

A kiwi chick at Mount Bruce. File photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

The Department of Conservation (DOC) says it is doing all it can to protect kiwi at a Wairarapa sanctuary where nine of the birds have been killed in the past month.

A total of 14 kiwi had been killed at the National Wildlife Centre at Pukaha Mount Bruce in the past two years, with ferrets the suspected culprits.

Four of the total population of 54 were found dead last month, and though the ferret thought to be responsible had been killed, another five died this month.

The dead birds had been sent to Massey University for post-mortems, but they had injuries consistent with ferret attacks, DOC Wairarapa area manager Chris Lester said.

Pukaha Mount Bruce was surrounded by farmland and had no predator fence, "so the only thing stopping [ferrets] from entering the forest really is our buffer control, our traps which we've set on farmland around the forest", Mr Lester said.

DOC moved 30 kiwi to Mount Bruce from Little Barrier Island in May.

Mr Lester said "mathematically" there were more risks for kiwi in Mount Bruce than on Little Barrier Island, "but I certainly wouldn't accept that we're playing with their lives. We're doing our very best to protect them and establish a population there".

"What we're trying to do here is establish a sustainable population of kiwi in an unfenced sanctuary," he said.

"Obviously there are risks to that and we've never underestimated those risks and we've never ignored them.

"We're very aware the kiwi in mainland sanctuaries are at risk and rely entirely on the trapping and pest control that we do.

"However, their chances of survival in places like Pukaha are much, much improved on normal uncontrolled wild situations."

Mr Lester said only one in every 10 kiwi chicks reached one-year-old in the unprotected wild, and fewer than one in 20 made it to adulthood.

At this point, DOC was "certainly not" considering taking the kiwi back out of Mount Bruce, but would be "forced to consider it" as an option if kiwi kept dying.

Mr Lester said DOC was spending a lot of time, money and effort on traps and a buffer zone around the sanctuary, and had the best predator control advice available.

"We've just escalated our trapping regime and our hunting regime to the point where we really can't do much more."

- NZPA