For the first time in history, kiwi birds were hosted inside New Zealand's Parliament, marking a significant conservation milestone. The event, held on Tuesday night in the Wellington banquet hall, brought together politicians, children, Māori groups, and environmentalists to celebrate the success of efforts to protect the country's national bird.
A Historic Gathering
When five kiwi were presented to a crowd of 300 people, an awe-struck silence filled the room. As handlers moved through the group cradling the whiskery birds, onlookers were spellbound. Some grew teary, and one boy, noticing a soft brown feather drift to the floor, scooped it up as his mother urged him to keep it safe. New Zealand may be saturated with images of its treasured national bird, but seeing one in the flesh is rare, and this was the first time kiwi had ever set foot in parliament.
Conservation Success
The event marked the culmination of a six-year project to redevelop a kiwi population in Wellington's wilds after a more than 100-year absence. Paul Ward, founder of the Capital Kiwi Project, described the occasion as "our manu [birds] coming home to the place they have inhabited for millions of years but which they had a brief exile from." The fluffy and flightless kiwi is one of New Zealand's most vulnerable birds. Roughly 12 million kiwi once roamed the country, but introduced predators and habitat loss have driven numbers to worrying lows—70,000 at the last estimate.
Community Effort
Conservation efforts are slowly boosting kiwi numbers. The Capital Kiwi Project released the first cohort of 11 kiwi into a vast sweep of hilly farmland in Mākara, 25 minutes west of Wellington's centre, in November 2022. Another 232 have followed, producing dozens of chicks. The project was required to achieve a 30% chick survival rate but has greatly outstripped this goal with an unprecedented 90% survival rate. The seven kiwi brought to parliament—five shown to the crowd—are the last cohort, bringing the total number of birds released into Wellington's wilds to 250. Wellington now has the largest population of people living alongside wild kiwi in the world.
Wellington mayor Andrew Little said the project is "demonstrating that even for a concentrated urban environment like Wellington city, we can restore biodiversity." The project's success is attributed to enthusiastic community buy-in. More than 100 landowners allowed the installation of 4,600 stoat traps across the bird's new 24,000-hectare habitat, making it the largest intensive stoat trapping network of its kind in the country. Schools, iwi, volunteers, mountain-bikers, and others contributed through trapping, advocacy, and fundraising.
Release into the Wild
Following the event, the kiwi were transported to Terawhiti station, one of the country's oldest and largest sheep stations on the Mākara coast, for release. On the expansive ridges overlooking the Cook Strait, under a soft mist and the whirr of wind turbines, the kiwi poked their long needle-like beaks out of their boxes and, with gentle encouragement, skipped out into the inky night. The crowd fell quiet, taking in the pleasure of watching kiwi embark on a new life in the wild and reflecting on the project's magnitude. Ward said, "That work to return kiwi is a shared purpose that is extremely powerful. What's incredibly satisfying about tonight is that it's working, it's showing what's possible when people work together."
