WELLINGTON, Nov 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Thirteen of New Zealand’s rarest kiwi birds have been released into the wild, in Westland National Park, on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island today, after their previous existing sanctuary is full.
The Department of Conservation (DOC) released the juvenile adult rowi kiwi birds at Lake Matheson, near Fox Glacier.
DOC would monitor the birds using smart transmitters, which would give the department valuable information on their movements.
The kiwis were raised on an island in the Marlborough Sounds, until they were big enough to fend off predators.
Rowi or Ōkārito brown kiwi, is New Zealand’s most endangered of the five kiwi species. It was found to be an entirely new species of kiwi in 1994, and given the name rowi.
Rowi were once abundant and widespread over much of the west coast of the South Island and south east coast of the North Island. However, habitat loss and predation, reduced the last remaining rowi population to within 11,000 hectares of forest in Ōkārito, north-west of Franz Josef.
Predation by stoats is the primary reason for the low survival of rowi chicks. Rowi chicks are particularly vulnerable until they reach one kg in weight. Stoats have been known to predate 95 percent of all young rowi chicks that hatched in Ōkārito forest.
In 1995 there were only 160 rowi in the forest. Now the number almost quadruple over two decades of recovery work, DOC said.
To reverse the decline of Rowi and the other kinds of kiwi species, DOC launched a project involving monitoring birds and taking eggs to hatch in captivity. Young birds are then released onto predator-free islands in the Marlborough Sounds and returned to Ōkārito, when they are big enough to fend off predators.
It has been so successful that DOC had to find a new home for the expanded population. The rowi remains the rarest of the five species of kiwi, but the population is now estimated to be about 600, according to DOC.– NNN-AGENCIES
