Pigs

Wild pigs are opportunist scavengers and foragers. Their omnivorous diet includes fern fronds and roots, supplejack, grasses, fruits, native snails, worms and centipedes – and the eggs and chicks of ground nesting birds.

Pigs excavate and kill kiwi in holes or on their nests, and destroy eggs.

Sometimes people deliberately (and usually illegally) release wild pigs so they can hunt them. The consequences for kiwi is a double disaster – not only do they run the gauntlet of wild pigs, hunters’ dogs are also lethal if untrained and uncontrolled.

The solutions

The BNZ Save the Kiwi DVD on How to Save Kiwi has a lot of information on how to trap pigs to help keep kiwi safe.

Training Competition

Have your hunting dog avoidance trained and you could win a hunting trip to the Motu!

New Zealand’s Icon

How kiwi came to be New Zealand’s unofficial icon – it may all be thanks to shoe polish.

Upcoming Events

Check out all the upcoming kiwi events.

Did You Know?

We used to think only male kiwi incubated eggs. We now know great spotted, rowi and the Haast tokoeka share incubation, and sometimes southern tokoeka pairs enlist the help of other kiwi to share incubation.