National Kiwi Hatchery marks 30 years of kiwi conservation

Throughout December, the National Kiwi Hatchery in Rotorua will celebrate 30 years helping to protect one of New Zealand’s most loved taonga, the kiwi.

The first kiwi egg arrived at the National Kiwi Hatchery from Tongariro in December 1995 and since then the facility has hatched over 2,600 kiwi, making it the world’s most successful kiwi hatchery.

National Kiwi Hatchery Manager Emma Bean says it’s a milestone worth celebrating.

“Over the past 30 years, through the combined efforts of Operation Nest Egg and predator control, we have been able to turn the tide for kiwi, lifting their threat status from ‘at risk’ to ‘no longer threatened’ but conservation dependant,” Emma says.

Through Operation Nest Egg, the hatchery receives North Island brown kiwi eggs collected from the nests of the kiwi populations of 15 different reserves and sanctuaries.

Emma says kiwi chicks are extremely vulnerable to predation by stoats, with 95% of juveniles in the wild dying before they reach adulthood, but the work of the hatchery greatly improves those odds.

“Our job is to keep the newly hatched chicks safe until they have tripled their birth weight and reached a ‘stoat-proof’ weight of one kilogram,” she says.

“After around five months, the young kiwi are big enough to be released into the wild and have a 65% chance of surviving to adulthood.”

When the hatchery welcomed its first chick, named Te Aukaha, in early 1996, it was operating from a small shed within the Rainbow Springs Nature Park.

The hatchery, a charitable trust managed by Ngāi Tahu Tourism, moved to new purpose-built premises at the Agrodome in 2023.

General Manager of Ngāi Tahu Tourism, Jolanda Cave, says that over the past 30 years the hatchery has progressed from hatching just one egg in the 1995-1996 breeding season to releasing around 100 strong young kiwi into managed populations across the North Island each year.

“The 30th anniversary milestone is an opportunity to acknowledge all of the kaimahi, volunteers and partners that have been part of this conservation journey,” Jolanda says.

“Through these collective efforts, the National Kiwi Hatchery has developed into a world-leading kiwi conservation facility that shares specialist knowledge within the zoological and conservation communities and plays an important role in educating international and domestic visitors about this treasured species,” she says.

To mark this occasion, visitors to the National Kiwi Hatchery can purchase a special kiwi soft toy tagged with the name of a chick hatched during one of the 30 breeding seasons. A linked QR code provides more information about each of the 30 selected chicks. The hatchery is also offering an opportunity to name a kiwi chick via a competition on its social media pages.

For more information about the National Kiwi Hatchery’s important conservation work, visit the National Kiwi Hatchery website