Kiwi ranger Jess Fancy holds one of 10 kiwi – pictured at a pōwhiri at Te Papa in April 2024. The Capital Kiwi Project has released nearly 200 kiwi into the region over recent years. Photo / Sarah Tansy
Kiwi ranger Jess Fancy holds one of 10 kiwi – pictured at a pōwhiri at Te Papa in April 2024. The Capital Kiwi Project has released nearly 200 kiwi into the region over recent years. Photo / Sarah Tansy
From Waiheke to Wellington, and deep into the Southern Alps, community-led conservation efforts are bringing some of Aotearoa’s most iconic native species back from the brink. Jamie Morton talks to the leaders of four projects making a difference.
It’s a loud, shrill screech that’s unmistakably the kākā – and on Waiheke Island, the gregarious native parrot’s call has become a soundtrack of conservation success.
Within just five years, Waiheke’s kākā population has quadrupled.
“They’re just so prolific here now, which is fabulous, because they’re such a screechy bird that people really notice,” said Jenny Holmes, who leads the local predator-free charitable trust Te Korowai o Waiheke.
“But moreover, kākā are what we call an indicator species – so they’ve kind of become synonymous with the gains that we’ve made in conservation.”
And those gains are impressive.
Waiheke Island’s kākā population has quadrupled over the past five years, thanks to work by community conservation project Te Korowai o Waiheke. Photo / Jason Bryant
Last year, the group reported a 76% increase in native bird numbers since 2020 – including a 236% rise in weka counts, and a 179% jump in pīwakawaka.
It all began in 2018, when a group of passionate island residents, iwi and organisations came together with a bold vision: to make Waiheke the country’s first predator-free urban island.
As one of the first five initiatives supported by Crown-owned Predator Free 2050 Ltd, the project has since rolled out more than 1750 stoat traps across the island.
In the fight against these notorious bird-killers, the group had some rare advantages: Waiheke was already possum-free, and its separation of more than 5km from the mainland made stoat reinvasions difficult.
With nearly 250 already caught, the project now reports the lowest stoat numbers of any Predator Free 2050 initiative – and is on the cusp of a major milestone, with kiwi set to be released in May.
Waiheke Island-based community conservation project Te Korowai o Waiheke has deployed around 1750 stoat traps around the island, leading to a 76% increase in native birds since 2020. Photo / Te Korowai o Waiheke
Holmes credits the project’s success to deep collaboration.
Perhaps most impressively, more than 95% of property owners in trial zones agreed to host bait stations, a powerful sign of community buy-in.
In the past year alone, 26 jobs have been created, many filled by locals, anchoring conservation as not just an ecological gain, but an economic one, too.
“We have farmers involved, contractors, our own staff and our volunteers – it’s really everyone working together to service the 17,150 traps across the island,” Holmes said.
“At this point, we’re trying to do everything we can to get those last remaining stoats – and we’re very close.”
The kiwi project making capital gains
If eliminating stoats from Waiheke sounded ambitious, so too did the idea of returning wild kiwi to the hills surrounding Wellington city, after an 150-year absence.
The Capital Kiwi Project – now a conservation success story that’s featured on the front page of the New York Times – started with a simple question, posed beside a nesting kākā box in Aro Valley’s Waimapihi reserve in 2016.
Back then, it seemed a stretch. But Wellington had been quietly rewilding itself for years.
Kiwi have returned to the hills surrounding Wellington city. Photo / Supplied
Thanks to the spillover effect of Zealandia’s fenced sanctuary and a groundswell of backyard trapping, species like tūī, kererū and kārearea were already flocking back to the city’s hills.
Now, Aotearoa’s national icon has joined them.
Across a vast 23,000-hectare area, the project has deployed an intensive network of 4600 traps to bring stoat numbers low enough for wild kiwi chicks to thrive.
Once the data showed progress, the first birds were released in late 2022. The project’s landscape scale pest removal coincided with successful sanctuary breeding programmes.
This meant the project could undertake the rewilding of kiwi at unprecedented pace and scale.
Capital Kiwi Project’s kaimanaaki kiwi Rawiri Walsh releases a kiwi at Wellington's Terawhiti Station in May 2023. The Capital Kiwi Project has released nearly 200 kiwi into the region over recent years. Photo / Sarah Tansy
“At project inception we could have, optimistically, been looking at a dozen or so birds at this point,” said project founder Paul Ward.
“Now we’ve got nearly 200 birds out there – being encountered by mountain bikers and caught on backyard security cameras – and all indications are that the population is thriving.”
Like Waiheke’s effort, Capital Kiwi is built on partnerships.
Support from iwi, landowners and communities alike has been crucial, especially in gaining access to large farms like Terawhiti Station and beneath Transpower and Meridian infrastructure. The roading has enabled the deployment and servicing of the traps.
“We now cover an area that is bigger than Abel Tasman National Park: and roughly 80% of that is on privately-owned land,” Ward said.
“It’s showing the possibilities for our taonga species, in our peopled environments, when we work together.
“The whole vision of restoring our kiwi is based on a network of protection: fundamentally a network of traps, but also a network of relationships,” Ward said.
“We’re not DoC [Department of Conservation], we’re not council, we don’t own any land. The support to ‘go kiwi’ has been voluntary and willing and driven by Wellingtonians.”
A whio feat in the Waioeka Gorge
In the upper Waioeka Gorge, between Gisborne and Ōpōtiki, a small group of hunters and anglers – regulars of the wild, boulder-strewn river – had watched the whio population decline over decades.
Floods had washed away nesting sites. Stoats had ravaged breeding pairs during the crucial moulting season. By 2020, just four pairs of the endangered blue duck remained.
Sam Gibson has a passion for and long history of working with the environment. He is pictured with his dog Bonnie. Photo / Liam Clayton
Sam Gibson and his fellow hunters had seen enough.
“We went to DoC but their budget didn’t quite extend to where we were, and we went to the council and got told the same thing,” Gibson said.
“So we just thought, if there isn’t the money to look after these birds, in these rivers and forests that have fed our whānau for generations, then maybe it’s on us.”
They got to work fast, laying 250 traps in the first year. That soon became 30km of trapline – enough to support 30 breeding pairs.
Against the odds, all four original pairs fledged chicks in that first season. Twenty young whio – a tripling of the population.
Since then, the grassroots project has grown into a 70-strong volunteer force, powered by social media and coverage in hunting magazines.
“We’ve been inundated with volunteers, and have had a few funders come onboard as well,” Gibson said.
“We now have such a skilled group of people that running a project of this scale is achievable.”
Takahē return to the Rees Valley
Paul Kavanagh understands well the challenge of scale.
He leads the Southern Lakes Sanctuary Trust, a conservation collective breathing new life into the spectacular landscapes around Queenstown and Wānaka.
With a project area spanning 660,000ha, the trust supports more than 100 community trapping groups and employs a team of dedicated staff.
Its domain includes a treasure trove of native species: kea, rock wren, pekapeka/long-tailed bat and the elusive orange-spotted gecko.
This takahē was among 18 released last summer into the Rees Valley, northwest of Queenstown, where hundreds of traps have removed nearly 2000 predators since 2022. Photo / Southern Lakes Sanctuary Trust
One major focus is the South Island takahē, with a goal of hosting 80 birds across the Upper Whakatipu by the end of 2025 – and several hundred within a decade.
That ambition took a leap forward with the recent release of 18 takahē into the Rees Valley, where hundreds of traps have removed nearly 2000 predators since 2022.
“We’re lucky this happened so early in our journey,” Kavanagh said of the release.
“Hopefully, it’s just the start.”
Born out of the Covid-era Jobs for Nature programme, the trust has since evolved into a unique collaborative model, one uniting landowners, iwi, NGOs and businesses.
“We’re kind of, of the community, for the community; what’s lovely about it is that it is that kind of grassroots feel.”
The initiative isn’t just about protecting wildlife, either: it’s also building careers and connection.
“We need to show that environmentalism and conservationism are valid career options in New Zealand.”
And the work is only just beginning.
“We want to be still doing our mahi in 20 or 30 years: conservation work has to be long term, or we lose the gains really quickly.”
Community-led projects like Southern Lakes Sanctuary, Capital Kiwi, Eastern Whio Link and Te Korowai o Waiheke play a critical part in New Zealand’s ongoing battle against pest predators estimated to kill some 25 million native birds each year.
“They fill the gaps – urban backyards, reserves, and the big landscapes that DoC and councils can’t reach,” Predator Free New Zealand Trust chief executive Jessi Morgan said.
“These projects, and many more out there, show what’s possible when communities take the lead. Conservation becomes more than an outcome or a duty: it becomes a way of life.
“They protect the taonga species but also build skills, relationships, local resilience, jobs, and connected communities.”
Southern Lakes Sanctuary staff install traps in the Kea Basin of the Rees Valley, northwest of Queenstown, in February 2023. There are plans to release several hundred takahē into the valley within a decade. Photo / Christina Becker-Fifield
Research showed that conservation groups build some of the strongest social capital in Aotearoa, Morgan said.
“That means tighter communities, stronger support networks and more capacity to weather all kinds of storms, both literal and figurative.”
She said every Kiwi benefited from this work, which amid government funding constraints was often “powered by the smell of an oily rag”.
“Nature and wildlife aren’t in remote national parks. They’re all around us, and they need our help.
“The ripple effects of protecting wildlife, bush, forests and wetlands mean better air and water quality, stronger tourism and agriculture: it shapes our sense of who we are.”
