New Zealand fights to save its flightless national bird

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New Zealand's treasured kiwi birds are shuffling around Wellington's verdant hills for the first time in a century, after a drive to eliminate invasive predators from the capital's surrounds. ManilaBulletin

Visitors to New Zealand a millennium ago would have encountered a bona fide "birdtopia" -- islands teeming with feathered creatures fluttering through life unaware that mammalian predators existed.

Possums -- introduced for fur -- stripped trees bare. Rabbits bred like, well, rabbits, devouring meadows and paddocks alike. This photo taken on April 12, 2023 shows a member of the Capital Kiwi Project team holding a male kiwi named Ātārangi after changing out a transmitter placed on the bird's leg before re-release into the wild on Tawa Hill, Terawhiti Station in Wellington. "Ever since people came to New Zealand, we have had a special connection to the kiwi," founder and project leader Paul Ward told AFP.

The project laid a huge network of 4,500 traps over an area equivalent to nearly 43,000 football pitches on the hills surrounding Wellington. The traps have claimed 1,000 stoats so far. Ward said a hush came over the 400-strong crowd as they caught their first glimpse of a kiwi when the first bird was released."The power of that moment was palpable," he said. "Our job is to bottle that and spread it across the hills of Wellington.""Two months after we released the birds, we were ecstatic to discover they had gained weight," Ward said.

 

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