August 17, 2023
Iwi steps up to save endangered stilt
A Ngāi Tahu representative says a collaboration with the Department of Conservation to save the world’s rarest wading bird is the kind of crown relationship envisioned by the South Island iwi when it settled its historic treaty claims almost 25 years ago.
The settlement entitled the iwi to have its own people work alongside DOC kaimahi to protect taonga species such as the kakī or black stilt.
Rynee de Garnham, a runanga observer on the project, says numbers have grown from 23 in the 1980s, to nearly 160 now.
“So my ultimate dream would be that there’s no need for a kakī recovery programme and, kakī are everywhere – and the talk of doing releases doesn’t exist because they’re just so populated back through Aotearoa,” she says.
The Kakī Recovery program is centred around the Mackenzie Basin, near Aoraki Mount National Park.