SOKK Website

Environment, Conservation and Outdoor Education Trust

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    • Monitoring and health checks: How it’s done
    • Predator trapping: Our major targets
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    • Biodiversity in the kiwi crèche
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    • SOKK as a classroom of the outdoors
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  • USEFUL LINKS
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The SOKK Project

SOKK is focused on the Kaweka Forest Park, situated in the central North Island between Hawke’s Bay and Taupo. It contains a mixture of beech forest, kanuka and manuka scrub with pockets of podocarp forest and alpine tussock at higher altitudes.

SOKK is run by the Environment, Conservation and Outdoor Education Trust (ECOED), which  was established in 2002 to halt the decline of North Island brown kiwi in the Kaweka Forest Park.

At that time, the park’s estimated kiwi population was about 200 kiwi. In response to this crisis, ECOED initiated the Save the Kiwi Hawke’s Bay Project, which is now known as Save Our Kaweka Kiwi (SOKK).

Our goal is to restore a healthy population of kiwi in the Kaweka Forest Park by:

  • Maintaining and expanding our local kiwi population
  • Using kiwi preservation to promote environmental education
  • Seeing the Kaweka Forest Park restored to a safe and healthy environment for kiwi and other native flora and fauna to thrive

In the park, SOKK has established a core breeding population of male kiwi that can be monitored. By checking the data outputs from transmitters attached to the males, we can tell if a kiwi is nesting and, later, if chicks have hatched. When chicks are ten days old, the nest is raided and chicks taken to the kiwi crèche at Lake Opouahi Scenic Reserve for rearing. When funds permit, we are also able to incubate recovered eggs.

Each tagged adult kiwi is also given a health check twice a year, whilst juvenile kiwis returned into the park are monitored every six weeks until they reach 1400g. At that weight, they are classified as adult kiwi.

The project has been involved in a range of other innovations, including:

  • trialling of transmitters when the original monitoring software was changed from analogue to digital
  • trialling new ways of attaching transmitters to kiwi, and
  • testing the effectiveness of predator trapping methods.

We have also collected feather and blood samples from our kiwi to be used in kiwi genetic studies, and have developed ways of dealing with kiwi health within the crèche environment.

 

Stories

The ‘zombie’ kiwi is alive, kicking – and now reporting in correctly!

Banner Photo: Julia holding Mr JCYou could call Mr JC a zombie kiwi. His transmitter was reporting him dead, but he continued to wander about. … Read More

Cute freshly hatched kiwi photos incoming in 3 … 2 … 1 …

The 2023/24 hatching season has officially started at the Crombie Lockwood Kiwi Burrow, with the arrival of four kiwi eggs.Two eggs came from a … Read More

A Japanese flavour to our day

Banner Photo: Checking Huripari's weight gainLast week, four of us headed off the Kaweka Road to do the first health checks on two new young kiwis … Read More

The hidden world uncovered by a trail camera

Banner Photo: Makino River setup l to r: camera, A24 trap, Steve Allen SA2 trap, an AT220 trap and a DoC 200 trapPete and Judy gained experience … Read More

We are almost there with a new Anawhenua trapline

Deb and David Harrington have been busy lately, working in the field on the Save Our Kaweka Kiwi project.On 30 June, they completed marking … Read More

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.

Do you want to help?

From marketing and fundraising to trapping and kiwi monitoring, we'll be able to find a way for you to help.

Get Involved

Email: [email protected]
Lake Opouahi, Hawke’s Bay

Major sponsors

MAJOR SPONSORS

Copyright © 2023 · ECOED is a registered charitable entity in terms of the Charities Act 2005. · Registration No. CC27154 · Website by D2 ·