The upside of a pandemic: how COVID-19 boosted Hawke’s Bay kiwi conservation

 

Every cloud has a silver lining, right? For Mike Walker, who manages the pest trapping and control work on our Maungataniwha and Pohokura properties, the cloud was The Pandemic and the silver lining was the $1.19 billion Jobs for Nature COVID-recovery package.

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Jobs for Nature funding was designed to create employment in the regions through funding various environmental support initiatives. It was administered and distributed through multiple government agencies and conservation-oriented NGOs such as the Department of Conservation and the kiwi conservation charity Save the Kiwi.

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The Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust applied for, and received through Save the Kiwi, a tranche of Jobs for Nature funding to assist with the relentless, daunting and expensive job of pest and predator trapping on our Hawke’s Bay properties. With funding in hand, we turned our attention to who we could employ for the job.

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Mike was exactly the sort of person the Jobs for Nature initiative was designed to help. His regional job, service manager for an earthmoving machinery company in Napier, evaporated during the first lock-down. Faced with the need to pivot – that term for swift and innovative change that will be forever associated with the pandemic years – Mike was mulling his options when our forest manager Pete Shaw came knocking at his door.

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The two men had known each other for a while. Mike had previously worked with Pete on a voluntary basis so, for Pete, the match was a no-brainer.

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Together they set about expanding the Trust’s network of predator traps and replacing a lot of aging ones in areas of regenerating bush on the block of former pine forest that the Trust owns adjacent to its property in the Maungataniwha Native Forest. 

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The main targets of Mike's efforts are mustelids, primarily stoats. These small, agile predators wreak havoc on native bird populations, particularly on kiwi chicks, which are highly vulnerable to predation in their early years. He is, of course, ultra-cagey about the bait he uses, describing it as a “proprietary mix”.

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The work is labour-intensive, with no vehicle access in most areas, and all of the traps need to be monitored and maintained by foot. “It’s all walking, no vehicle access,” Mike explains. “It’s hard and costly to service, but it’s the only way to do it.”

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Hard and costly it might be, but the work is rewarding and effective. Our Maungataniwha Kiwi Project is regarded by Save the Kiwi as one of the most prolific and successful kiwi conservation initiatives in the country. Population numbers have reached the point where experts believe that it can continue to be self-sustaining as long as predator control work is maintained.

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This success means that juvenile kiwi raised from eggs retrieved from Maungataniwha can now be used to help recover kiwi populations at the Trust’s Pohokura property too.

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With this in mind, Save the Kiwi and Jobs for Nature funded Mike to install an additional 516 additional traps at Pohokura, building on the network that the Trust had already established. At seven traps per kilometre of trap-line, around a third of the 11,348 hectare Pohokura estate is now a dangerous place to be for mustelids, possums and rats.

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Much of the work involved dropping traps into remote parts of the estate by helicopter, flying them in packages of seven to the furthest points in the forest. From there two-man teams would set up the traps, working their way downhill.

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The impact of their efforts is tangible. The birdlife on Pohokura has begun to recover, and the sounds of native birds like the whio (blue duck) and kiwi are more common than they were before the trapping programme began. Each trap represents a small victory, a step toward restoring the balance of nature in this remote part of the world.

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“It’s a tough job,” Mike acknowledges. “But we’ve made real progress. The traps are working, the birds are coming back. That’s what it’s all about.”

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The Jobs for Nature programme is discontinued as of June 2025 but, in Mike’s case at least, it served its purpose of generating employment and stimulating the growth of new regional businesses with a focus on environmental stewardship. Along the way, and with the income generated by the work it funded, Mike was able to establish his own business.

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Whio Contracting now employs several people who conduct pest and predator control work for customers across Hawke’s Bay. For our part, we plan to continue working with Mike and his team and their next mission will involve one of the sanctuary areas on our Maungataniwha Native Forest property, where predator populations are being reduced in an effort to provide a safe place for a variety of native bird species to breed.

 

Mike’s an engineer by training and the company also offers a raft of engineering services. This includes trap construction, typically DOC 250s. The process started small during lock-down, right after Mike’s position at the earthmoving machinery company was made redundant. He would build a few with his nail-gun and drop-saw until his workshop was annihilated by Cyclone Gabrielle.

 

He rebuilt, of course, bigger and better, and now trap manufacturing is a productive way to keep costs down while also providing valuable jobs during the winter months when access to the bush is limited. The company buys the mechanisms in and assembles the housings on site, selling the finished product to conservation projects, organisations and initiatives across the North Island, from Helensville in the north right the way down to Cape Palliser in the south.

 

Mike looks back quite frequently to those dark days of the first COVID lock-downs and wonders how life might have panned out had he been able to go back to his job as a service manager in Napier.

 

“It was shock at the time but I reckon that bloody coronavirus did me the biggest favour,” he said. “Now I get to hang out in some of the coolest places in the country, doing something that’s really worthwhile.

 

“But the Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust, Save the Kiwi and that Jobs for Nature funding really made it possible. And for that I’m so grateful.”

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