Saving the Taranaki kiwi

It's just as well there are people helping kiwi because our famous bird is disappearing. Eggs and chicks are being nabbed at an alarming rate by cunning, sharp toothed predators like stoats and rats. Without help the kiwi could be extinct from the mainland within 20 years.

Taranaki has the largest population of the North Island Brown kiwi and the Taranaki Kiwi Trust and DOC aims to keep it that way. This week's story tells you about their work.

Rewind

Travel back in time to just before people began to live in New Zealand. No one knows an exact date but let's say the year 1000. Were the things below really happening then? Answer true or false and then check your answers at the end of this week's TreasureLink.

1. There are giant geese, native crows and booming moa.
2. Kiore the Polynesian rat is living here.
3. There is evidence of people visiting and leaving.
4. There are two species of land dinosaur.
5. There will be no people living here until the 13th century.

Word watch

All the words below are in this week's story. Choose the best meaning and then check your choices when you read the story. The answers are at the end of this week's TreasureLink.

1. sobering (a) lively or (b) serious
2. fossick (a) to roll around in or (b) to rummage or search around
3. notoriously difficult (a) amazingly difficult or (b) widely known to be difficult
4. metaphorically (a) continue to or (b) a figure of speech that usually means one thing but is used to mean another
5. incubation (a) the time that a new born baby spends in a controlled environment that will help it get off to a good start or (b) the time that an egg is sat on or artificially warmed before it hatches
6. foraging (a) searching for food or (b) protecting itself
7. susceptible (a) likely to be affected or (b) tasty
8. low density (a) not that intelligent or (b) not that many living in an area
9. aversion (a) staying away from something because something unpleasant happens or (b)  turning away from something and travelling fast in the other direction
10. subsidised (a) getting money off someone or something to help pay the costs or (b)watched very closely

Knowledge attack!

Find out all about the kiwi. Check out their characteristics here. Use the menu on the left to help you navigate and finish this fact sheet:

The predators

This week's story is about saving the kiwi - from their predators.  Hawks and eagles once dive bombed kiwi but they weren't the killing machines that sneak through the bush today.

These ones were brought by people and some are almost as cunning. You can read about these killers here. 

Meet the Westies

Read the first part of this week's story down to Operation Nest Egg in the limelight. Find out these things:

1. How long will kiwi live on mainland New Zealand if we don't give them a helping hand?
2. What's special about Tara and Naki?
3. How many North Island Brown kiwi live in Taranaki?

Look here to find out more about the North Island brown. Look for information about other places they live in and pair up with a classmate to work out why the numbers in the story don't quite match up with the numbers on the website.

Self defence!

Operation Nest Egg is a "double edged operation" to save our kiwi. That means pest trapping and egg grabbing. The whole idea is to release young kiwi back into the bush when they're big enough and tough enough to take on a pest.

Read all about it in Operation Nest Egg in the limelight and then click on the document below to draw your own survival infographic:

Trappers!

Trappers use traps to catch the pests but not traps like the one in the cartoon. Can you work out why?

Read 900 traps and counting and find out what they use and how effective they are.

A long line of pests

3371 is a massive number of dead pests so the traps must be doing some good. What if all these pests were laid end to end? (We could do that because dead pests can't run away.)

This would help us see how many pests have been caught. Work out how long the line would be using the numbers and measurements below.

• 571 stoats @ 40 centimetres per stoat
• 29 ferrets @  50 centimetres per ferret
• 98 weasels @ 25 centimetres per weasel
• 9 feral cats @ 50 centimetres per cat
• 2,601 rats @ 15 centimetres per rat
• 59 hedgehogs@ 17 centimetres per hedgehog

Predator free!

The more people that know about kiwi conservation the better and the next part of the story shows how the Trust spreads the word. You can also read about two predator fences that are planned for Taranaki. Read Educating Kiwis.

The predator fence is a cunning fence. It's well designed and cleverly built. The one around the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington is the most effective barrier in New Zealand.

Pair up with a classmate for some predator fence problem solving. Look here:

When you have solved your design problems look here  to see if your designs are better, equal to or not as good as the ones at Karori.

Shocking dogs

Dogs kill kiwi without even trying. One bite and the kiwi is history. Read Dogs in for a shock to find out why. It's shocking stuff.

A few years ago one dog in one forest killed more kiwi in six weeks than you would ever think possible. It's a tragic tale. Read all about it here.

The story shows that the electric collar trains hunting dogs to stay away from kiwi. That's good because we need top hunting dogs charging through the bush to round up wild pigs. These pigs don't usually kill kiwi but they can root up and destroy burrows.

How could the collar help the Kiwi Trust people in another way? Think about Operation Nest Egg. What do they need? Come up with a use for the collar and then share your idea with a classmate.

Big steps to protect

Finish the story now and check out the steps the Kiwi Trust is taking to protect kiwi even more in the future.

Fast forward: The egg burglar 

Sid Marsh tracks down kiwi for the Department of Conservation - DOC. It's part of Operation Nest Egg and Mike Scott from The Taranaki Daily News recently told this story:

Sid collects kiwi eggs, transfers them to the kiwi centre at Rainbow Springs, Rotorua and then picks up the chicks and delivers them back to the bush. He works on DOC land at Aotuhia in eastern Taranaki. That's where he found the male bird named TaKT - named after the Taranaki Kiwi Trust.

Sid can imitate kiwi calls. He does it on a shepherd's whistle and the sound brought TaKT towards him. Sid knew where this kiwi was. He first heard its calls in September 2004 and six months later he caught the bird to fit a transmitter.

Male kiwi incubate the eggs so the females can build up strength for the next breeding season. The transmitter showed that that this kiwi had stayed in one place for more than three weeks and that usually means he's nesting.

Sid sat in his car until the transmitter showed that TaKT had left the nest to find food.
Sid sneaked in, reached into the burrow and grabbed the eggs. He used a torch to see if it was a "live" egg. He can also tell what stage of development an egg is at. He left the burrow in excellent condition so poor old TaKT didn't get too stressed. "It's a bit sad," said Sid, "because we nicked the eggs but they would have died if we didn't."

A chilly bin with a hot water bottle kept the eggs snug during the trip to the Kiwi Encounter at Rainbow Springs, Rotorua.

You can follow what happens next at here. It's not the Kiwi Encounter at Rotorua and the kiwi is another bird named "006" but the same things happen. Both places are recovery centres for Operation Nest Egg.

Rewind answers
1. True.
2. True. Carbon dating of bones suggest that this rat may have been established in New Zealand as long as 2000 years ago - The Penguin History of New Zealand.
3. True. Kiore were here so this suggests they came ashore from a discovering canoe that visited both the South Island and the North around 2000 years ago.  The people may have gone back to Polynesia or they may have stayed. There is no evidence of an early settlement so it may be that because of low numbers or a single gender or a natural disaster they died out without trace - The Penguin History of New Zealand.
4. False. There were once but these died out 65 million years ago.
5. True. The Penguin History of New Zealand tells us there is no direct evidence of human occupation before the thirteenth century - no hearth fires, tools, no human remains or the remains of creatures killed for food.

Word watch answers
1b, 2b, 3b, 4b, 5b, 6a, 7a, 8b, 9a, 10a