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Help from a lot of friends, to scare off invaders

15 August 2022 by Deb Harrington Leave a Comment

Top picture: The safety briefing

A bird in each hand, but there were thousands more in the bush

Thousands of starlings have been roosting within the crèche at Lake Opouahi, threatening to make it an unhealthy environment for young kiwi. The starlings’ droppings carry disease.

A team of volunteers, mostly from the Tutira community and led by George Christison, took on the challenge of scaring the invaders off. We can’t thank Team Starling – George, Polly and the Tutira community – enough for their support in the project. It’s been a huge commitment and effort.

Our thanks also go to DoC, Aaron from Gun City for sponsoring 12-bore ammo, as well as Hamish from Crab Farm Winery and Ian from Two Terraces Vineyard for providing gas gun bird scarers and setting them up. It sounded like a mini-war going on up there!

Hamish (l) and George (r), taking a break after installing the bird scarers

George and his team spent a week of evenings, bird-scaring at the crèche.

Kiwi chicks from the front of the Kaweka ranges are brought to the crèche in the Spring, where they are safe from predators until they grow and reach a weight where they are more capable of fighting off creatures such as rats, weasels and stoats. When they reach the target weight of around 1kg, they are returned to the Kawekas.

Aside from being home to young kiwis, the Opouahi Wilderness Base is where school students can go camping, caving, gorging and Canadian canoeing. A beautiful spot that provides a safe place for many kiwis – and for Kiwi kids to adventure!

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About us

The Environment, Conservation and Outdoor Education Trust (ECOED) was established in 2002 to halt the decline of North Island brown kiwi in the Kaweka Forest Park. At that time, the estimated kiwi population was about 200. In response to the crisis, ECOED initiated the Save the Kiwi Hawke’s Bay Project, which is now known as Save Our Kaweka Kiwi, or SOKK.

Our goal is to restore a healthy population of kiwi in the forest park.

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