'Safe zones' condemn wild kiwi to extinction

By ANNE BESTON environment reporter

Government policy is condemning our national bird to tiny "safe zones" while 60,000 kiwi in the wild are killed at the rate of 11 every day, says a leading conservationist.

Chilling proof of extinction outside the five kiwi sanctuaries has just come from Northland, where a research station that monitored kiwi calls for more than 20 years has fallen silent, the last bird gone.

Long-time kiwi campaigner and former Forest and Bird president Keith Chapple said the pattern was being repeated all over the country.

He was a key force behind the establishment of kiwi sanctuaries but now believes they are working against the birds.

Each sanctuary had fewer than 500 kiwi but they soaked up the biggest chunk of the Department of Conservation's kiwi budget, while 15,000 birds in the Wanganui region were being left to the ravages of stoats, rats and possums, he said.

"We have got 50 per cent of the North Island brown kiwi in the Wanganui DoC region but we are not getting anywhere near enough money to protect them. They are going to be sacrificed."

The Taranaki/Whanganui Conservation Board wants an "urgent review" of the sanctuaries.

The boards have a reputation for taking a softly-softly approach to criticising DoC but Taranaki/Whanganui chairman Kevin Phillips has written to its governing body, the New Zealand Conservation Authority, saying present policies "condemn Whanganui kiwi and other populations to local extinction".

He wants the authority to support the board's call for DoC to "actively protect all remaining kiwi" and for only the rarest sub-species, such as the little spotted kiwi, to be confined to safe zones.

Kiwi ecologist Dr Murray Potter, of Massey University, said localised extinction of the bird was inevitable under present policy.

"Sadly, that is what is happening to unmanaged populations, and resources to spend on the problem are seriously inadequate."

DoC's manager of threatened-species, Paul Jansen, said local extinctions were "sad and depressing" but managing an area in the Wanganui conservancy such as Matemateaonga Ecological District, where DoC estimates there are between 6000 and 10,000 birds, was not practical.

"Until we've done the consolidation and saved typical groups of endangered populations we would be mugs to go out and try to manage a huge piece of earth like that," he said.

But the sanctuaries would be reviewed after 2005 and it was hoped more money would be available for work outside the zones.

The kiwi's plight

* Every day 11 kiwi are being killed, a rate of 6 per cent a year.

* Kiwi will probably be extinct on mainland New Zealand outside "safe zones" in 10 years.

* The birds are thought to number 50,000 to 70,000 on the mainland - 4500 of them in sanctuaries.