Breeding season for world's rarest kiwi off to good start with first chick hatched

Wednesday, 1 September 2021

The world’s rarest kiwi has been given a boost, with the first chick of the latest breeding season hatching at a wildlife centre on the West Coast.

The rowi chick hatched on Wednesday morning at the West Coast Wildlife Centre in Franz Josef.

Local iwi Te Rūnanga o Makaawhio will officially name the chick, but in the meantime the centre’s team are informally calling it Hope because it is a beacon of light for New Zealanders.

There are five species of kiwi and the rowi is the rarest, with an estimated population of just 600.

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Department of Conservation rangers brought Hope’s egg to the centre about three weeks ago.

The rangers track monitored adult birds for signs of nesting activity, then take the eggs to the centre for safe hatching as part of Operation Nest Egg – a multi-agency effort to boost the kiwi population.

The egg weighed just 394 grams when it arrived at the centre.

Wildlife husbandry manager Laurie Keller said it was a textbook incubation process.

The chick was healthy enough to hatch at 8.20am on Wednesday, having taken about five days to break open from the first sign of internal pipping (cracking the shell).

“It’s a really exciting time for the team as during the hatching process the chick is often really vocal and is actively moving inside the egg,” she said.

“The chick is now successfully hatched, and is currently warm and cosy in its hatcher.”

The chick was the first of several that will be incubated and hatched at the centre this breeding season, Keller said.

The rowi is found in the wild at Ōkārito Forest near Franz Josef, and in the Omoeroa Ranges near Fox Glacier, where a new population was re-introduced late 2018.

Operation Nest Egg has helped bring the rowi population back from the brink of extinction. About 160 birds were left in the southern Ōkārito Forest in the early 2000s.

The eggs are removed from the forest for safe hatching because kiwi chicks are targeted by predators like stoats.

The eggs are hatched at the West Coast Wildlife Centre and then taken to Christchurch’s Willowbank Wildlife Reserve for about two months.

The chicks will then most likely head to one of the predator free islands at the top of the South Island before being released into the wild of the Omoeroa Ranges once they are big enough to fend off predators.

Since opening in 2010, the West Coast Wildlife Centre has safely hatched more than 341 rowi kiwi chicks and 120 Haast tokoeka.

The public can visit the centre to see the kiwi in its hatching and rearing facilities.