New Zealand aims to turn tide of extinction for national bird

The New Zealand government is to breed more of the iconic native kiwi bird in a bid to stop its course towards extinction in the wild, Conservation Minister Maggie Barry said Thursday.

The national bird was facing a crisis, with fewer than 70,000 kiwis left in the wild and the population dropping by 2 percent a year, mainly due to introduced predators such as rats, stoats and ferrets, she said in a statement.

"In our grandchildren's time kiwi could be extinct in the wild on our main islands," Barry said.

The government was committing 11.2 million NZ dollars (8 million U.S. dollars) to a "game-changer" initiative that would focus on turning the annual loss into a 2-percent annual population gain.

Kiwi breeding programs on public and private land would be scaled up, with New Zealanders encouraged to use their farming skills to raise and release many more kiwi into the wild.

"We will be expanding the existing breeding programs to raise more birds to a survivable weight in the safety of predator-free islands and sanctuaries," Barry said.

"As a nation, we are expert farmers, and I want to encourage more people to become involved in kiwi conservation efforts across the country."

The funding would enable conservationists to adopt new technologies and techniques in an effort to combat predators in their local communities, while the Department of Conservation would more than double the area of public conservation land it actively managed for kiwi, scaling up pest control and using the latest acoustic monitoring technology to keep track of populations.

"Nine out of 10 kiwi chicks born in the wild die without protection from predators," Barry said.

"I am confident that this program will be a defining moment in our kiwi conservation history, the moment when we turned back the tide of extinction which threatens our national bird." Endi