Jonathan Miles, Programme Manager, Biodiversity, lives in Turangi, at the southern end of Lake Taupo in the central North Island. 

He works for the Tongariro Taupo Conservancy and commutes every day to Whakapapa Village in Tongariro National Park and his job in charge of the kiwi zone on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu.

Up until June 2003 he worked in the Department of Conservation’s Aniwaniwa Area Office, on the shores of Lake Waikaremoana in Te Urewera National Park.  There he worked closely with tangata whenua (the people of the land) to manage the lake’s population of kiwi.

Being back at Whakapapa is a bit of a homecoming for Jonathan.  It was as a Masters student in 1991 that he first met the Brown Kiwi of Tongariro National Park and neighbouring Tongariro Forest.  For three years he studied these birds, exploring their ecology and behaviour, the first to do so.  Some of the birds he issued with radio transmitters are still there today providing valuable information.

Addicted to Kiwi

Jonathan was turned on to kiwi while on a trip to north-west Nelson to help Dr John McLennan in his study of Great Spotted Kiwi.  “Catching my first kiwi got me addicted,” he says.  “It really is like an addiction.  You think you’ve got these birds sussed, and then they do something completely different and you have to start again.  They are a real challenge.”

Researching Kiwi Chick Deaths

After graduating, Jonathan moved to Lake Waikaremoana and a job with Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, as an assistant to John.  Their questions about what was happening to kiwi on mainland New Zealand delivered the answer that stoats where the biggest threat, decimating the young chicks before they became old enough to fend for themselves.  It was, says Jonathan, a time of much heartache, pain and tears. 

“The first steps were to locate birds and that took a long time because there were very few here.  We were targeting adult male kiwi because they are the ones on the nests and we were interested in what they were sitting on - not so much the eggs, but the chicks that come out of them.”

From 1992 – 1995 all kiwi chicks they found were radio tagged.  The results were devastating – 95 per cent were killed within their first month of leaving the nest.

Partly because of the type of injuries the chicks’ suffered, and partly on a hunch, the kiwi team began intensive stoat control over 750 hectares on Puketukutuku Peninsula.  That breeding season the chicks on the peninsula survived, but their cousins outside the stoat controlled area were decimated. 

Low Point

For three years traps were laid on the peninsula but not in the area next door – the aim was to build up a watertight case against stoats.  This was, says Jonathan, the lowest point of his kiwi career.  “Having to continue this for three years, knowing that chicks outside the control area were going to die for the sake of a data point to convince other people that stoats really were the major problem was terrible.  We knew there were 45 to 55 chicks that were going to die.”

High Point

In the end, they did not die in vain.  The findings at Waikaremoana were instrumental in securing greater funding for stoat research and the setting up of Kiwi Zones.

And they lead to the high point in Jonathan’s kiwi work – knowing that the predator control underway at Lake Waikaremoana since 1995 has turned the area’s kiwi population around.  “We have adult birds alive as a direct consequence of our predator control.  The chicks of birds we saved are now producing chicks.  And it’s all happening in the wild.

“Back in 1995, if you saw a feather or some kiwi shit, that was a high point.”

The Future

Jonathan feels positive about the future of kiwi in New Zealand.  His dream for the future is that kiwi will again roam free on the mainland, not just on offshore island sanctuaries, so that anyone who ventures into the bush can enjoy them.  “They shouldn’t be locked away.”

In the meantime, he’s grateful for the chance to meet so many good people and animals who are also working to save the kiwi.  Including his partner, Isabel Castro, and his kiwi dog, Eco, who will soon hang up her muzzle in retirement.