After decades of decline, a feathered icon is breeding in New Zealand’s capital

At the base of a towering fern, Pete Kirkman pushed his hand through a curtain of dead branches into a hole. His fingers came to rest on a lump of feathers. He carefully pulled out a cub the size of a fist.

Stunned by the daylight, the chocolate-colored night bird shook its pencil-like beak back and forth. “You’re doing well,” Mr. Kirkman, a conservationist, said soothingly when he made the discovery last week. Then he heard scratching from the hole. He watched in delight as another cub rushed out, looking for his brother or sister, and fell into his arms.

The kiwi – a native bird so beloved by New Zealanders that the name has long been shorthand for them – once roamed the country. Starting in the 19th century, millions of people were slaughtered by non-native predators such as stoats, a mammal related to the weasel. Now only about 70,000 kiwis remain, most of them in remote parks or islands. Accordingly, every boy is special. However, these two were notable.

The den in which they were born is located five kilometers west of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, in the suburb of Makara. The dangers of the bustling city caused the kiwi to disappear from this part of the country for over a century. But last year, after a half-decade effort to reduce stoat and rat numbers, dozens of kiwis were reintroduced to Makara’s hilly farmlands.

The two cubs found by Mr Kirkman were the first born in the wild in the Wellington area in living memory, experts say. While Mr Kirkman warned that they still have to outlive their vulnerable youth, he called it a “special moment” in the drive to make the kiwi a permanent part of the urban landscape.

The kiwi’s resurrection is part of an intensive government program established in 2016 with a very ambitious goal: to eliminate most non-native bird predators from the country by 2050. Many have been introduced by humans. For example, stoats were brought to New Zealand the 1800s as a way to reduce the number of rabbits themselves brought in by people – who destroyed sheep pastures.

In addition to the kiwi, the predator free program has had remarkable success.

Earlier this year, the prehistoric-looking takahē and Muppet-like kākāpō were reintroduced to New Zealand’s main islands after decades of absence.

With the kiwi, conservationists have become more ambitious. Initially, it seemed impossible to turn Makara, a vast stretch of coastline comparable in size to Manhattan and Brooklyn combined, into a safe haven. Many residents were skeptical, said Paul Ward, director of Capital Kiwi, a conservation group.

Still, he said, “Everyone was so helpful. Who wouldn’t like to take care of kiwi?

Experts estimate that there were once 12 million kiwis in New Zealand, divided into five different species. They are eccentric: they cannot fly and are nocturnal, with mouse whiskers and dinosaur-like legs, usually growing only two feet long, but laying eggs so large that, in human terms, they are the equivalent of giving birth to a three-year-old child. old.

They may seem like a surprising choice for a national symbol. But after a shoe-shine company named after the bird became a favorite supplier to the British military during World War I, the kiwi became New Zealand’s most recognizable animal.

To protect the birds, Capital Kiwi laid almost 5,000 predator traps in Mākara, relying on a coalition of volunteers, from the farmers on whose land the traps were placed to the mountain bikers who frequented nearby trails.

A local school even placed traps outside classrooms. Now teachers teach math with the rats and stoats they catch, while students feed the corpses to eels that live in a local stream.

Ultimately, so few pests remained that Capital Kiwi asked a kiwi sanctuary if it could bring some of its birds to Makara. Gradually they released about 60 birds.

“I’ve had sleepless nights,” said Terese McLeod, a Capital Kiwi volunteer. “I dreamed of rats, mice and weasels for a long time.”

However, over a year later, all the birds appear to have survived.

For Ms McLeod, who belongs to Taranaki Whanui, a local Maori tribe, there was another reason to be proud. The kiwis introduced to the area are descended from birds rescued from the tribe’s territory.

Although kiwis are shy, locals already encounter them. One evening in September, as Sean Duggan navigated a sharp bend on his mountain bike, he saw two strange shadows. It took him a moment to realize what the whiskered feather balls were.

“They looked like avocados with long legs,” he joked. “You just don’t expect to see them.”