Iain Graham: DoC diversity ranger on the discovery of a little spotted kiwi in the wild

A rare little spotted kiwi has been spotted in the wild on the mainland for the first time in nearly 50 years. 

The bird was seen in March in the remote Adams Wilderness Area on the West Coast.

It's estimated only 2000 remain, and were thought to be only on offshore islands or in fenced predator-free sites.

DoC diversity ranger Iain Graham discovered the bird - and says they're more vulnerable to predators than other kiwi species. 

"It takes these guys a whole lot longer than our other kiwi species, it takes them up to two years to get to that stoat-proof weight, so they're vulnerable for a much longer period of time."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Massive News and Conservation The scening at nineteen after five,
a little spotted kiwi or kiwi puka puku has been
located on the New Zealand mainland for the first time
in fifty years. Dock hunter Ian Graham and his little
dog Brew discovered the kiwi in the West Coast bush
and he is with me now, high Ian Koda, Hey

(00:22):
tell us how you found this kiwi.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Ah, Well, we got a report from a hunter back
in March and he'd taken a photo of kiwi that
he'd stumbled across while he was doing his job. He
passed it on to us and it's in an area
that we don't really expect kiwi to be and so
we thought it was worth worth a follow up.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
This is on the West Coast Adam's Wilderness area.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yes, Adam's in this area, right in the middle of
sort of Southwestland. Yeah, we gave it, gave it a
follow up and we managed to manage to get in
there with a with a group of hunters and myself
and my conservation dog Brew spent a week in there.

(01:11):
We managed to find a female kiwi in that time
and we basically we spent the last last little while
trying to determine if she is Kiwi Pooka puckoo or not,
and it turns out she is. That's pretty exciting for
us in the conservation world to see Kiwi Puka poockoo

(01:31):
on the mainland sort of outside of a sort of
fence sanctuary or predator free offshore island for the first
time in fifty years.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Did they look different? Do they sound different?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
They do? They? When I was there, I spent the
first night basically calling for Kiwi, sort of soliciting calls.
They're quite territorial, so they want to call back and
let you know that you're in mere territory. And so
the first time I heard this bird, I knew it
wasn't It wasn't a sort of one of the locals,

(02:09):
one of the ry or great spots that are nearby.
And I heard two of them they were jeweting, and
from that moment I was like, Okay, these are these
guys are different, and it was. It was pretty pretty
exciting to contain the excitement for a while.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Did you say, do you do a call? Can you
give us a give us a call? Is it? Do
you do it like vocally?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
No? No, we we have we have recorded calls. We
play over sort of a loud speaker if if anyone's
heard ki we. The male are sort of a shrill,
high pitch whistle and the female. The females are sort

(02:52):
of a throaty, sort of cough sound.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, it's the hard the hardest sleep next to I've been.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
There they are, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
So this is all very exciting.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Why is it that the the puka pukuo or the
little spotted kiwi, why are they so much more endangered
on the mainland?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
So their kiwi puka puckoo are the smallest of the
species of kiwi. They they're full ground weight is sort
of between twelve hundred to sort of eighteen hundred grams,
and basically we call stokeproof for a kiwi anything over
one to one point two kilo. So it takes takes

(03:37):
these guys a whole lot longer than our other Kiwi species.
It takes them up to two years to get to
that stoakeproof weight, and so they're vulnerable for a much
much longer period of time.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
You're getting around a bit. You're in Canada right now
fighting wildfires. How's that going?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I am good. We've just arrived at Cross Lake. We've
sort of spent the last three days traveling to get here,
sort of all it's got sort of itchy feats, trying
to get out onto the fire line tomorrow. But yeah,
we're here assisting the basically assisting the locals in Manitoba
and assisting and sort of providing of welcome release to

(04:16):
their busy season.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
In fascinating chat. Thanks for coming on the program.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
In Graham dot By, Diversity, Ranger, all round Bush Action,
man by the Sounds of It.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to
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Speaker 1 (04:28):
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