KEY POINTS:
For more than 100 years, New Zealanders have freely exploited the kiwi's name and curious shape without much regard for its welfare in the wild.
Now, it's payback time.
A people's movement is rallying in support of the people's bird.
Across the North Island, from the Far North's forested hill country to Wellington's mountain backdrop, communities have mobilised to save kiwi populations or create new ones.
As a whole their efforts are phenomenal - the largest New Zealand nature conservation movement for a threatened species. It involves thousands of volunteers, scores of projects and sponsors, and millions of dollars.
Embryonic support began in the mid-1990s, grew wings and fledged by the year 2000 and, unlike the bird, has been flying purposefully and with extended range ever since.
There is substantial community support in all North Island regions where kiwi remain - Northland, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Urewera, East Coast, Taranaki, Wanganui, Tongariro and Hawkes Bay.
Some areas are seeing kiwi reintroduced - for example, Wellington's Rimutaka Range and Pukaha/Mt Bruce in the Wairarapa.
In Northland alone there are at least 30 community projects, not counting the many initiatives of individual landowners.
Farmers and other landowners are joining the cause of kiwi conservation in unprecedented numbers, supporting trapping and poisoning programmes against predators.
In most regions, trust organisations have mushroomed to lead the charge, with the Department of Conservation cast in a subsidiary role, as an adviser and supporter of many of these projects, rather than the leader and principal funder.
The department manages, with community support, five kiwi sanctuaries established in 2000 to mark the launch of the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy. They will keep kiwi on the mainland whatever else happens. Three sanctuaries are in the North Island (Tongariro, Coromandel, Whangarei). The two in the South Island, at Haast and Okarito, are trying hard to save populations of kiwi.
DoC has set bottom lines - a minimum of 500 pairs for North Island kiwi in areas where they are being managed, and a minimum of 300 pairs for the two most seriously threatened populations in the South Island, both of which are under management.
"Managed" means taking measures to control or eliminate predators, assist reproduction and enhance habitat in clearly defined areas.
The 500-pair target for managed populations in the North Island assumes a population of around 1500. That's considered to be a robust number in terms of genetic health.
Kiwi would have gone the way of the moa decades ago but for their gritty, school-of-hard-knocks nature, powerful legs and claws for weapons, and resistance to stoat attacks once they are beyond a certain age and weight.
They have hung on long enough on the mainland to welcome the arrival of the cavalry, comprising battalions of concerned individuals and Forest and Bird volunteers, reinforced by highly motivated trust organisations and assisted by dollops of funding from business interests and local government.
Reports over the past two decades of a relentless decline in kiwi numbers appear to have sparked this private-sector phenomenon.
The Bank of New Zealand Save The Kiwi Trust was an early contributor. The bank said it was "shocked to learn that kiwi could disappear off the mainland".
By the end of 2005, total allocations from the trust to approved kiwi protection projects had topped $5 million.
Protection comes in various forms.
Predator-free sanctuaries, the gold-plated form, are being created at Maungatautari (the largest at 3400ha) in South Waikato, Tawharanui Peninsula (530ha) north of Auckland, Bushy Park (92ha) in Wanganui, Cape Kidnappers (2200ha) and Lake Opouahi (40ha) in Hawkes Bay, Lake Rotokare (230ha) in Taranaki and Orokonui (250ha) near Dunedin. In Wellington, the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, fenced in 1999, protects a growing population of little spotted kiwi.
Then there are the predator-controlled "mainland islands". They include Puketukutuku Peninsula at Lake Waikaremoana, Boundary Stream in Hawkes Bay, Pukaha/Mt Bruce in Wairarapa, and Lake Rotoiti in Nelson. Intensive trapping at these places is not only giving local kiwi populations a chance but also doing much to restore biodiversity.
Selected islands, too, have become creches for young kiwi, allowing them to grow unmolested to a stoat-proof size. Stoats are enemy number one. Dogs roaming wild are also highly menacing, especially in the North Island.
The key to boosting selected kiwi populations in the short to medium term is an artificial hatching and chick-rearing programme called Operation Nest Egg.
In the North Island, Rainbow Springs' purpose-built Kiwi Encounter facility at Rotorua achieves a great output on behalf of projects across the middle of the North Island, and Auckland Zoo does a comparable job for Northland, where most kiwi live on private land.
Having once occupied all lowland and mid-altitude areas of New Zealand, kiwi now live on less than a quarter of the country. Although the so-called managed areas (fenced sanctuaries, predator-free islands and intensively trapped areas) cover just 2 per cent of the present kiwi domain, they represent a springboard for recovery - a lifeline.
Kiwi scientist John McLennan, of Havelock North, says there is now scope for "kiwi farming". Surpluses of juveniles reared in creches, sanctuaries and mainland islands, can restock tracts of North Island habitat that are less intensively managed. Over time, "harvested" young kiwi may also boost populations in unmanaged areas.
In the South Island, kiwi conservation is largely a DoC job. Most kiwi live in wilderness areas a long way from towns and highways. Their habitats are almost exclusively on conservation land. Apart from the endangered Haast and Okarito kiwi populations, the great spotted kiwi of northwest Nelson and the Fiordland and Stewart Island tokoeka (brown kiwi) appear to be just holding their own, unassisted.
There are about 80,000 kiwi left. In pre-human times, there were possibly 12 million.
Kiwi can be saved on the mainland.
Although some populations will continue to decline, others will gain numbers and their range will expand so long as support for them continues. As the tide turns for these kiwi, so is it for other threatened biota.
Sustaining the momentum in people power and funding is going to be a challenge, no doubt. But as new technology to control stoats and manage kiwi is developed, the job should get easier and less costly.
In the 1960s, US President Jack Kennedy appealed to Americans to save their symbol, the bald eagle.
"We shall have failed a trust if we allow the eagle to disappear," he said. People responded, and now the eagle is off the endangered list.
No country embraces its national bird as comprehensively as New Zealand does the kiwi - to the point where the people themselves have taken its name. At last, the bird itself is benefiting.
Dunedin author Neville Peat's third book on kiwi is titled Kiwi - The People's Bird (Otago University Press, $45).
