Students hope to help New Zealand's rarest bird through jewellery business

Monday, 18 October 2021

Olivia Ediriweera, 17, (left) and Eli Bennett, 17, are two students from Wā Ora Montessori School in Lower Hutt who are passionate about conservation and have created earrings to support the critically endangered bird, the New Zealand fairy tern.

New Zealand’s rarest bird is shy and hard to spot, but two teens want it to be in the limelight.

Eli Bennett and Olivia Ediriweera, both 17, are passionate about helping the tara iti, or New Zealand fairy tern, a nationally critical threatened species.

The students at Wā Ora Montessori school, in Lower Hutt, have created a jewellery business, The Gaia Collection, which they hope will raise awareness about the bird, and other endangered species.

As part of the Young Enterprise Scheme, Bennett and Ediriweera designed the laser-engraved wooden earrings in the shape of the fairy tern, the yellow-eyed penguin and New Zealand’s only indigenous parasitic flowering plant, the wood rose.

“Everyone knows about the kiwi and the takahē, but there are 7500 species at risk of extinction in New Zealand,” Bennett said.

Watch Department of Conservation staff return critically endangered fairy tern eggs to their nest after a storm in Mangawhai during the 2020 breeding season.

* Fairy tern chick hand-reared for first time since the 90s released into the wild

Department of Conservation list the fairy tern as likely to be the rarest breeding bird in the country.

* NZ fairy tern: Pilots flouting new rules could drive rarest bird to extinction

Department of Conservation list the fairy tern as probably the rarest breeding bird in the country.

Two students from Wā Ora Montessori School in Lower Hutt have created earrings to raise awareness of threatened species such as the fairy tern, yellow-eyed penguin and wood rose.

There are about 40 individual birds left in the country – though it's hard to know exact numbers – and 12 breeding pairs.

The “shy, skittish” bird, thought to fly as quickly as a hummingbird, is dangerously close to extinction, Bennett said.

Auckland Fairy Terns at Mangawhai. There are about four breeding sites for the critically endangered bird.

They breed at four sites in Auckland and Northland, but their small, white speckled eggs resemble pebbles, at risk from rats, stoats, cats and humans.

“Their habitats are tourist attractions,” Ediriweera said.

Each earring is made from sustainable materials and laser-engraved by local company Abstract Designs.

The students have teamed up with Forest and Bird and $5 from each $20 pair of earrings will go towards Forest and Bird’s project to create an alternative breeding site for the birds.

They also hope the fairy tern can win the 2021 Bird of the Year competition. Voting opened on Monday and will close on October 31.

“I think for us, it was the fact that there were such low numbers of the bird, but we had never heard of it before,” Bennett said.

“We want to do what we can to help them. It’s urgent – something needs to be done now.” Ediriweera added.

Mostly selling the earrings online, the students have raised $630 in profits, aiming to donate $3000.

Eventually they hope to expand to different materials, and stock the jewellery in stores around the country where the species live.

The students want to “spark conversation' through the earrings, Ediriweera said.

“We hope when someone is wearing them another curious person will ask ‘oh what species is that?’ and they’ll learn – so many friends have asked us about them.”