Kiwi projects receive $226,000

Conservation Minister Maggie Barry has announced new funding for three groups with exciting plans to help New Zealand’s national bird thrive in the wild.

$226,000 from the Community Conservation Partnerships Fund will go towards the projects in the West Coast, Northland and the Coromandel.

“These three projects are deserving recipients of CCPF funding,” Ms Barry says. “Together with our $2.13 million investment in 31 other pest control initiatives announced last week, we are determined to enable community groups and volunteers to make gains for conservation.”

The CCPF funding comes in addition to the $11.2 million commitment to kiwi recovery announced in Budget 2015, which included $3.5 million for independent charitable trust Kiwis for Kiwi to distribute to community groups.

“Our national bird is declining in the wild by 2 per cent a year, with only around 70,000 birds left in isolated, fragmented populations,” Ms Barry says.

“They could be extinct in the wild within our grandchildren’s lifetimes. We know that by supporting community groups and boosting DOC’s own work with kiwi, we can reach our goal of turning that decline into a 2 per cent increase.”

The three groups receiving CCPF funding are:

Friends of Flora - $103,863 to translocate up to 12 great spotted kiwi into the Flora project area in Kahurangi National Park, increasing genetic diversity in the local population.

Te Runanga o Te Rarawa - $83,616 for the Warawara Restoration project in Northland, enabling a new kiwi aversion training programme for dogs, development of a dog control strategy and community advocacy.

Thames Coast Kiwi Care - $39,000 to continue a co-ordinator role overseeing stoat trapping, predator control and monitoring of the Coromandel brown kiwi population in the Te Mata Valley.