Environment, Conservation & Outdoor Education Trust

What we do:

ECOED Trust’s Save Our Kaweka Kiwi (SOKK) project rescues kiwi chicks from a population of monitored males in the Kaweka Forest Park, Hawke’s Bay. Kiwi chick mortality in the wild is extremely high due to predation by stoats, ferrets and dogs. Just one out of every 20 wild kiwi makes it to adulthood.

The chicks we rescue are relocated to the safety of a predator-fenced creche at Lake Opouahi, near Tutira. Here they are monitored until they reach 1kg, then released back into the Kaweka range. Eggs are also recovered when resources for hatching are available.

Parallel to the kiwi recovery programme, we run a pest control operation in the Kaweka Forest Park and monitor over 31 trap lines – that’s over 1300 traps a month! We have around 33 dedicated volunteers who collectively donate over 4500 hours annually.

When the ECOED Trust was formed in 2002, only 500 eastern brown kiwi were estimated to live in the Kaweka Ranges. Without assistance, the population was expected to disappear by 2050. To date, more than 340 chicks have been raised and returned to the wild through the SOKK programme.

Our long-term vision is that the Kaweka Forest Park can be restored to a safe and healthy environment for kiwi and other native flora and fauna to thrive.

Your Donation:

Your donation will help us keep the SOKK programme running. It costs around $1700 to raise and release a chick, and another $400 per year to monitor it. Our predator control programme costs around $7000 per year.