Paul Ward presents five kiwi in New Zealand parliament

Five kiwi were presented inside new zealand’s parliament in Wellington on Tuesday night, the first time the birds had ever set foot there. The appearance capped a nine-year effort led by the Capital Kiwi Project to rebuild a wild population in the city.

Paul Ward in Wellington

Paul Ward, founder of the Capital Kiwi Project, told the crowd of 300 people in the banquet hall that “This is our manu [birds] coming home to the place they have inhabited for millions of years but which they had a brief exile from.” He also said, “Kiwi have been a part of who we are and our sense of identity as long as people have been here.”

Ward added, “If we are honest with ourselves, we haven’t honoured the koha [gift] of that relationship.” He told the crowd, “Arguably there have been more Wellingtonians involved in this [project] than were extras in Lord of the Rings.”

Mākara releases

The project began with 11 kiwi released into hilly farmland in Mākara in November 2022. Another 232 kiwi followed after November 2022 and produced dozens of chicks, while the seven kiwi brought to parliament were the last cohort to be introduced.

The project had to meet a 30% chick survival rate to satisfy its Department of Conservation permit, and it reported a 90% chick survival rate. A total of 250 kiwi have now been released into Wellington’s wilds.

Wellington’s wild kiwi

Andrew Little, Wellington’s mayor, said, “It’s demonstrating that even for a concentrated urban environment like Wellington city, we can restore biodiversity.” More than 100 landowners gave permission for 5,300 stoat traps to be installed across 24,000 hectares of habitat.

The broader backdrop is stark. The source says roughly 12 million kiwi once roamed New Zealand, but introduced predators and habitat loss reduced the population to 70,000 at the last estimate. Wellington now has the largest population of people living alongside wild kiwi in the world, and the parliament appearance turned that local conservation result into a public marker of what has changed.