Kiwi Bird

Quesition1: The Kiwis extinction is possible, scientist believe that before humans arrived in Aotearoa, 12 million kiwis lived in the North, South and Stewart Island. Today the population has plummeted to around 50-60,000 birds. This means that there population over the last thousands year have dropped over 99.5%. The adult weights about 2.2 pounds and that was enough to fight of smaller predators but since humans arrived over 1000 years ago there have being bigger and stronger mammals that could kill the kiwi easily. Another problem is that 95% of juvenile kiwis are killed in there most vulnerable period by stoats and cats; also there have been 194 in northland alone for lose or wondering dogs. I quote “It’s because of people introducing predators: ferrets, stoats, weasel, cats, and dogs” says Jeremy Magurie, manger of the Willowbank Wildlife reserve. “They are a species in decline, and if it continues at this rate, they will become extinct”. Finally it’s not only the animals doing the kiwi but people driving carelessly where kiwis are around.

Question2: A lot seems to being done to stop the kiwi extinction; in it all started 1991 when the Bank of New Zealand made a partnership with the Department of Conservation and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society. The program covered the conservation and management of New Zealand’s, national bird. Northland alone at least 12 kiwi projects have begun since 1999 the cost of this annually is around $110 million. New Zealand’s very first community- initiated kiwi sanctuary began in1995- on Kuaotunu peninsula, in the Coromandel. Volunteers do most of the extensive predator control on both public and private lands. More recently, communities in Kerikeri, Russell, Cambridge, Whenuakite and Whangarei Heads, to name a few, have begun work to protect habitat and remove predators from large tracts of forests and farmlands.


Question3: The Kiwi as an emblem first appeared in the late last centaury in New Zealand regimental badges. Badges of the South Canterbury Battalion in 1886 and the Hastings Rifle Volunteers in 1887 both featured kiwis. Later, kiwi appeared in a great number of military badges. The Kiwi symbol began to be recognised internationally in 1909 when the Kiwi Shoe Polish was launched in Melbourne by a man with a New Zealand born wife. Soon the polish was widely marketed in Britain and the USA during WW1. The kiwi name came about inWW1 when New Zealanders craved a giant kiwi on a chalk hill above Sling Camp in England. In Flanders during the war, the name ‘kiwi’ for New Zealand soldiers came into general use. Over seas New Zealanders are still known as Kiwis. So if the kiwi does go extinct our name and national icon will be gone so will we still be called kiwis? Who knows?