Kiwis' future is sounding good - Call count monitoring reveals sudden increase in numbers
March 2012: New Zealand conservationists are - literally - ‘hearing' that the Northland kiwi thriving.
An annual ‘listening' for the bird's distinctive call in 2011, showed the highest level of growth since listening records began.
‘We recorded growth at all of the original core sites and at all but one of the 12 supplementary clusters,' says Department of Conservation Whangarei kiwi ranger Emma Craig.
‘This is an absolutely fantastic result, much better than I would have hoped, and a real credit to all those people across Northland involved in kiwi call count monitoring, and kiwi conservation in general,' she added.
'Numbers have gone through the roof'Kiwi are up against a lot of hurdles, and have a suite of predators including dogs, stoats, ferrets, and cats. Luckily, these predators can be addressed, and when they are, some kiwi populations are booming.
‘We are seeing quite a few sites where kiwi conservation has been happening for less than a decade. Call rates had been increasing very slowly; then suddenly in 2011 they went through the roof,' says Ms Craig.
She credits much of the increase to community groups protecting kiwi in their own backyards and, in particular, good dog control. BNZ Operation Nest Egg has also helped to re-establish kiwi populations in some areas.
It is only the adult kiwi that call, so kiwi call count monitoring picks up population growth a couple of years after it has occurred.
The annual kiwi call count monitoring takes place in May and June each year, with volunteers offering to sit at one of nearly 200 stations listening out for the birds for two hours a night.
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