Kiwi Conservation Tool

• It boosts numbers in threatened kiwi populations quickly, and allows new populations to be established, spreading the risk.
• It helps increase our knowledge of kiwi behaviour and breeding.
• It’s a powerful advocacy tool.

Rapid population boost

BNZ Operation Nest Egg™ is particularly effective for rapidly recovering populations of the most rare kiwi taxa. For example, at Okarito kiwi sanctuary, rowi numbers have increased by 25% over six years, thanks in part to a bumper season in 2007/2008 when 25 chicks made it to safe havens – the most ever hatched since the sanctuary was created in 2000.

BNZ Operation Nest Egg™ is also used to bring kiwi back to places where once they roamed, quickly bump up populations that have declined to just a few individuals, and help larger populations recapture their former range.

To ensure the unique gene pools and adaptations of each kiwi population are preserved, chicks are returned to the wild populations from where they came, or used to establish entirely new, discrete populations.

Increasing our knowledge

BNZ Operation Nest Egg™ has helped researchers learn a lot about kiwi behaviour, breeding, diseases and parasites, which all improve the success of captive husbandry. For example, the discovery that kiwi males turn the eggs during incubation has improved hatching success.

Two techniques developed to test the health of eggs are:

• balancing a strand of dry spaghetti against the egg – if it vibrates, there is life inside the shell
• egg candling - holding the egg up to a light to check if the egg is viable, and how old the chick is.

BNZ Save the Kiwi sponsors annual candling workshops to make sure kiwi workers have the skills to correctly identify and age wild-collected eggs. If collected too soon, eggs are less likely to successfully hatch. The workshops also teach people the best ways to handle and transport eggs.

Capturing hearts and minds

Because it provides the opportunity to be directly involved in handling kiwi, BNZ Operation Nest Egg™ is a useful tool to advocate for kiwi.

Because Maori have always recognised the important relationship between living things and the land on which they were born, and kiwi hold a special place in Maori culture, there is often a ceremony to welcome the young kiwi back to the place of their birth.