Mural artist Reasha Pye, and baby Saige, talking about her connection to Pirongia Te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society. Photo / Dean Taylor
Mural artist Reasha Pye, and baby Saige, talking about her connection to Pirongia Te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society. Photo / Dean Taylor
The story of kōkako at Pirongia maunga is being brought to life, with two murals being painted for Pirongia Te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society (PRS) at their envirocentre in Pirongia Village.
Local artist Reasha Pye, of Tails Told, secured funding from Waipā Creative Communities for the stunning murals - one depicting lively kōkako feeding in Pirongia, and another showing an evocative night scene featuring pekapeka [New Zealand long-tailed bats], ruru [moreporks] and patupaiarehe, the fairy people connected with the maunga.
Reasha wanted to inject vitality into the envirocentre to give the projects on the maunga more momentum.
She painted the kōkako to be engaging and full of personality and was inspired to include dandelions as a food source for the kōkako by her father, Scott Fraser, a long-time volunteer for PRS.
“He was there at the release of the Tiritiri Matangi kōkako at Pirongia and remembers them going for the dandelions on the lawn of the Pirongia Forest Park Lodge,” said Reasha.
“That caused a lot of anxiety. The birds had obviously developed a taste for dandelions on their island home, but that was pest-free and it was safe for them to eat.
“Here at Pirongia, there were still predators around, especially at the bush edge, so it was a relief when the birds moved deeper into the forest park.”
The night scene in the second mural is more about the spiritual side of Pirongia maunga.
To complete the murals, key people were invited to share their stories relating to kōkako and add finishing touches.
Three mokopuna of founding member Sally Uerata brought a future perspective for rangatahi.
Sisters Maia (back) and Mihi Davis-Uerata adding their touches to a mural. Photo / Dean Taylor
Their whanau have a wonderful connection to kōkako, thanks to the Carnachan ties to Kokakoroa Rd at Waitomo, which could be translated as ‘plentiful kōkako’.
Living at the foot of the maunga, they are close to the other stories mana whenua cherish about this sacred, spiritual bird.
According to Dr Tame Roa, when King Tāwhiao brought an end to the Māori Land Wars in 1881 at Pirongia Village by laying down a substantial selection of arms, he placed roasted tūī, parrots and wood pigeons, which were food, along with a kōkako on the arms – “te koko, te kaka, te kereru, me te kōkako”.
The food offered was to remove the tapu of war, but there was a deeper message for the colonialists because of the kōkako, which was not food.
These rangatahi also come from a family where hearing the waiata of the birdlife when they were in the ngahere on the maunga was a given - but it’s not any longer.
Their hope is the restoration of the maunga and its hei whaioranga [life force] will be a source of healing for their generation, and having the kōkako back in its home will be an important part of that for Aramoana, Mihi and Maia Davis-Uerata.
Gerry Kessels, a Te Pahu ecologist and current committee member of the society, was part of the team that caught the last kōkako in the 1990s to stop them from dying out.
Pirongia Te Aroaro o Kahu Restoration Society member Gerry Kessels and mokopuna of original committee member Sally Uerata, Aramoana Davis-Uerata, help with some final touches to one of the murals. Photo / Dean Taylor
Gerry shared his recollection of coming to Pirongia as a young scientist with the Department of Conservation (DoC) in 1991: “There was a DoC base in the village, and I stayed there in the single men’s quarters. From Pirongia to that big swathe of bush going down to Waitomo Caves, there were tiny little relics of kōkako living there. We knew these birds were going to die in the mid-1990s, so a few Wildlife Service people, with the blessing of the DoC managers, decided to catch these kōkako and bring them to Kāpiti, a safe haven. Some of those birds also ended up north at Tiritiri Matangi Island.”
“To catch them, we would put big soft nets between the trees, then we’d play our recorders to call the birds and egg them on into the nets. They’d eventually get caught in the nets and fall into a pocket of the soft mesh where we could catch them. We’d calm them down and put them in a nice bag, keep them [in the] dark and feed them things like bananas or some sugar water to relax them. Then we took them by vehicle to Ōtorohanga Kiwi House where they settled down, and then they were flown to Kāpiti Island.
“I didn’t think we would ever see kōkako back on our mountain again. So, it was a very emotional day when we first released the birds back here after 20 years, and to have them now living and breeding here.”
Kevin Christie, current PRS chairman, said: “In 2002 the society was formed, and Clare St Pierre and I were some of the founding members. For the kōkako to come back on to the mountain, there had to be a vision in the community that something could be done about it.”
Pair of kōkako at Pirongia. Photo / Bernie Krippner
“The goal right from the start was to get kōkako back on the maunga. We’ve done that, but it would never have happened without people like Gerry, who had the wisdom to take them away and shelter them from predators, and like Sally Uerata,” says Kevin.
“She was a founding member and our iwi representative and would be telling us what it used to be like on the maunga and what we had to do.
“She told us all, ‘This is going to be passed to you. It will be your generation that will be the kaitiaki of these birds’.
“It was only through mana whenua and the community caring about these things that we have turned this around, and now it is time for the next generation to take it on.”
Kōkako numbers began declining through logging by colonists and the introduction of predators. By 1999, only 330 breeding pairs were left, and it’s likely the South Island kōkako is already extinct. But with DoC, scientists, communities and mana whenua working together, numbers for North Island kōkako climbed to over 2000 pairs in 2020. PRS released 54 kōkako at Pirongia between 2017 and 2022, 14 of them with Pirongia genes.
“This was a common bird across all our main three motu, as well as Aotea/Great Barrier Island,” says kōkako ecologist Amanda Rogers. “Waking up to the sound of kōkako should be normal — a Kiwi cliche like fish and chips, not a privilege for just a few people. It should be something that we are all really familiar with, that people miss when they go overseas. I’d like to think that’s where we are going, but we’ve got a lot of work before we get there.”
The kōkako ecologists project managed the translocations of the birds to recolonise Pirongia Forest Park.
“Kōkako are what we like to call an umbrella species,” explained Dave Bryden, the other kōkako ecologist who has been involved with the project since the Wildlife Permit Application stage in 2016.
“There are certain species in the forest which serve to improve the health of the forest. Kōkako can eat large fruits, and therefore can spread the seeds of plant species that smaller birds cannot. But if you are providing predator control, which is sufficient for kōkako to increase, then you are also protecting all those other native species within the same ecosystem, especially those vulnerable to rats, stoats and possums.”
Amanda said most of the kōkako at Pirongia are in areas with annual pest management, including the new Sainsbury and Kaniwhaniwha extensions, which “is amazing when you consider how far they can and do roam”.
“It means PRS chose the right places to set up pest control.”
Dave also emphasised that hard work and astute thinking from the society is behind the success.
Dave Bryden and Amanda Rogers banding a second generation Pirongia kōkako. Photo / Tom Davies
“The excellent planning and strong commitment from PRS to the extensive post-release monitoring and adapting their pest control based on the monitoring feedback is now paying dividends with the growth in breeding pairs we are seeing,” he said.
“This year, we think we’ve just topped over 20 pairs of kōkako. So, from here, hopefully, it’s just going to grow at an exponential rate.”
In terms of the permit conditions, there won’t be a requirement to survey the kōkako intensively once they exceed 25 pairs, but a smaller sample could be monitored. Effective pest control will remain critically important, and if people want to help support the kōkako, getting behind pest control with PRS would be a great option.
Amanda wants to see the momentum created by the project continue.
“Perhaps with the 1200 to 1300-plus hectares PRS is protecting annually, the question might be, what else could you protect? How else could you maximise the benefit of that predator control? Perhaps other species could be introduced.”
Mural of Pirongia: Night Scene. Photo / Clare St Pierre
The last word belongs to Clare St Pierre, a founding society member and one of its driving forces for two decades.
“My understanding is that hei whaioranga means to heal the maunga and bring it back to life,” she says.
“It is about the relationship between people and the natural world.
