A recent image of a young kiwi at the National Kiwi Hatchery. Photo / Supplied
A recent image of a young kiwi at the National Kiwi Hatchery. Photo / Supplied
The National Kiwi Hatchery in Rotorua is celebrating 30 years of helping to protect one of New Zealand’s most loved taonga, the kiwi, this month.
The first kiwi egg arrived at the National Kiwi Hatchery from Tongariro in December 1995, and since then, the facility has hatched more than 2600kiwi.
Hatchery manager Emma Bean said it was a milestone worth celebrating.
“Over the past 30 years, through the combined efforts of Operation Nest Egg and predator control, we have been able to turn the tide for kiwi, lifting their threat status from ‘at risk’ to ‘no longer threatened’ but conservation dependent,” Bean said.
Black and white images of Te Aukaha, the first kiwi hatched at the National Kiwi Hatchery. Photo / Supplied
Through Operation Nest Egg, the hatchery received North Island brown kiwi eggs collected from the nests of the kiwi populations of 15 different reserves and sanctuaries.
Bean said kiwi chicks were extremely vulnerable to predation by stoats, with 95% of juveniles in the wild dying before they reached adulthood, but the work of the hatchery greatly improved those odds.
“Our job is to keep the newly hatched chicks safe until they have tripled their birth weight and reached a ‘stoat-proof’ weight of one kilogram,” she said.
“After around five months, the young kiwi are big enough to be released into the wild and have a 65% chance of surviving to adulthood.”
When the hatchery welcomed its first chick, named Te Aukaha, in early 1996, it was operating from a small shed within the Rainbow Springs Nature Park.
The hatchery, a charitable trust managed by Ngāi Tahu Tourism, moved to new purpose-built premises at the Agrodome in 2023.
Ngāi Tahu Tourism general manager Jolanda Cave said that over the past 30 years, the hatchery has progressed from hatching just one egg in the 1995-96 breeding season to releasing around 100 strong young kiwi into managed populations across the North Island each year.
Te Aukaha, the first kiwi hatched at the National Kiwi Hatchery. Photo / Supplied
“The 30th anniversary milestone is an opportunity to acknowledge all of the kaimahi, volunteers and partners that have been part of this conservation journey,” Cave said.
“Through these collective efforts, the National Kiwi Hatchery has developed into a world-leading kiwi conservation facility that shares specialist knowledge within the zoological and conservation communities and plays an important role in educating international and domestic visitors about this treasured species,” she said.
To mark this occasion, visitors to the National Kiwi Hatchery could purchase a special kiwi soft toy tagged with the name of a chick hatched during one of the 30 breeding seasons.
A linked QR code would provide more information about each of the 30 selected chicks.
The hatchery would also offer an opportunity to name a kiwi chick via a competition on its social media pages.
For more information about the National Kiwi Hatchery’s important conservation work, visit the National Kiwi Hatchery website.
