【专题】环球见闻 March 11th

Hello and welcome to Postcards, a show helping you reach across borders without actually taking a trip. I'm Shen Ting. New Zealand's iconic bird, the kiwi is under threat with only some 70,000 left in the wild. The flightless birds are cherished by New Zealanders and the fight is on to save them. Here's XYee with today's first postcard sent from New Zealand. Reporter: The kiwi is an odd-looking bird: short and round with a long probing beak. They are flightless, usually nocturnal and elusive. They are also rare. Many New Zealanders have never seen one in the wild. Conservation projects across New Zealand are busy at work trying to boost the presence of this national icon, as numbers in the wild fall. Kiwis are under threat primarily from introduced predators. In the wild most kiwis do not reach adulthood. A chilling statistic from one kiwi conservation charity says 95 per cent of kiwis born in the wild do not make it to adulthood. Efforts to breed kiwi in captivity in New Zealand are increasing. This is a kiwi hatchery at Auckland Zoo. Eggs are brought in from the wild. They are incubated here, and then when they hatch, the chicks are reared for about three to four weeks before being taken to a predator-free island to grow further. The breeding project here is small in scale, but experiencing success. The facility has released 270 kiwis into the wild since 1996. Auckland Zoo senior keeper, Michelle Whybrow, is checking on two eggs that are incubating. This one is around 66 days old and still has some way to go before it is ready to hatch. Kiwi eggs are unusual in that they are so large. Whybrow examines the egg including the keeper markings on it which show the size of the egg's air cell. This egg is 71 days old and the chick inside has already begun cracking its shell in preparation for hatching, as Whybrow explains: "So you can see here this is the air cell and we have drawn on here as the air cell has grown. And we have got some cracking here. So I am just going to carefully take the egg out and place it on the bench and we'll see if we have got any movement." The little bird is rocking inside the egg, pushing at the far end of the shell with its feet, being eager to hatch. Whybrow says the keepers encourage the chicks. "So often they'll respond to you talking or whistling to them and it seems to encourage them. And you will often get this burst of movement." In the brooder room a brooder box sits waiting for the little chick to hatch out. The chicks spend their first few weeks of life in this room until they are big enough to be transferred to a predator-free island, often Motuora Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf. After several months they will be taken back to predator-proofed land such as in Northland and released into the wild. Kiwi reaches adult size at around three to five years, mate for life and can have a life expectancy of 25-50 years. According to New Zealand's Department of Conservation, all kiwis are under threat of extinction, but to varying degrees depending on their species. Whybrow says kiwis are worth fighting for, for many reasons. "They are a native species. They're very well known. We have taken their name. You know as New Zealanders we call ourselves Kiwis so just for those reasons alone. But they're just amazing birds and if we were to lose them that would be awful - to think that in our lifetime we could lose something as amazing as this." Kiwis for Kiwi raise funds to help with public awareness of the plight of the kiwi and to help with predator control. Michelle Impey is the executive director. Originally from Canada, she has lived in New Zealand for ten years and has fallen in love with kiwi in the process. She says that before foreign animals were introduced into New Zealand by colonials, kiwi had no predators. "So the interesting thing about New Zealand is the only mammal that is native to New Zealand is a little tiny fruit bat. So everything you see here from the mice, the rates, the stoats, the ferrets, the rabbits, the possums, the dogs, the cats, the sheep, the goats, everything has been introduced. So part of what kiwi are under threat from. Some of it is habitat loss but that's not the big issue, they are really resilient birds. Their big issue are the mammalian predators that man has brought with them." Kiwis for Kiwi also run courses for dog owners on avian aversion training, teaching dogs who go into New Zealand's bush and farmland to recognize where kiwi live and to avoid them. They hope their training will avoid the sad sight of dead kiwi being attacked by dogs. As well as dogs, kiwis are under threat from ferrets, stoats, rats, possums and cats. These animals can all attack kiwi on the ground, the chicks and eat kiwi eggs. Michelle Impey says keeping these animals away from kiwi is vital. "Number one is predator control, making sure that chicks make it through. Probably one of the second most effective is a programme called BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) Operation Nest Egg. And that's a method where we take the eggs from the wild, incubate them in a captive facility, rear the chicks until they are about a kilo in size. And at that point they can fend for themselves against a number of predators, stoats being the number one for chicks." Along with running the kiwi rearing facility, Auckland Zoo does what it can to educate the public about kiwi conservation through information displays and signs. Kiwi populations are spread out across New Zealand, from Northland at the top of the North Island to Stewart Island below the South Island, as well as offshore islands.