Kiwi Conservation Tool

• It boosts numbers in threatened kiwi populations quickly, and allows new populations to be established, spreading the risk.
• By boosting kiwi numbers quickly, it allows other forms of management to become more cost effective
• It helps increase our knowledge of kiwi behaviour and breeding.
• It’s a great tool to help raise people's awareness about kiwi - a rare opportunity to get up close and personal.

Learn more about how it works here.

Rapid population boost

BNZ Operation Nest Egg is particularly effective for rapidly recovering populations of the most rare kiwi taxa. BEcause it takes eggs and/or chicks, not adult birds, it means the source populations stay intact and can continue to breed and build the population.  With kiwi living for up to 40 years, that can mean many new recruits - as long as predators are kept at bay.

For example, at Okarito kiwi sanctuary, rowi numbers have increased by 100% since Operation Nest Egg began there.  In November 2010, a record 35 juveniles were released back into the sanctuary, after spending their first few months on predator-free Motuara Island in the Marlborough Sounds.

Operation Nest Egg is also used in conjunction with kohanga kiwi to bring kiwi back to places where once they roamed, quickly bump up wild populations that have declined to just a few individuals, help larger populations recapture their former range and establish entirely new kiwi populations.

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

Increasing our knowledge

Since its earliest experimental days, when brown kiwi eggs and chicks were carefully nurtured in incubators in kiwi researchers' home living rooms, Operation Nest Egg has delivered a lot of information about kiwi behaviour, breeding, diseases and parasites, which all improve the success of looking after them in captivity. For example, the discovery that kiwi males turn the eggs during incubation greatly improved hatching success. It is also possible to 'patch' chipped eggs to keep the embryo safe inside.

Two techniques developed to test the health of eggs are:

Over the years, it has become clear that removing kiwi eggs helps build populations more quickly than removing chicks, because the parent birds are more likely to lay another clutch.  Monitoring shows that this does not cause more divorces than would naturally occur, which means the parents do not necessarily perceive the eggs' disappearance as breeding failure.

BNZ Save the Kiwi works with Kiwi Encounter at Rainbow Springs to run regular workshops for kiwi workers to make sure they 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, Operation Nest Egg is a useful tool to advocate for kiwi.

For example, in the early 1990s, politicians had the opportunity to meet the first rowi chick hatched in captivity in Hokitika. That simple experience gave them an early appreciation of the importance of the tool, which proved useful in winning the required funding for kiwi conservation.

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.