If you bump into Gaia O’Hare on a day off, chances are she’ll end up talking about kiwi anyway.
“I love working with kiwi so much,” she says. “I think about them every day and end up discussing work all the time on my days off. Getting to know the kiwi – tracking them from an egg to a newly hatched chick, to releasing them as a fluffy one-month-old into the creche and watching them grow up into lanky teenagers – is so cool. I love watching their personalities develop and seeing the new places they find to sleep as they get older.”
The environment was always going to be in Gaia’s future. After completing a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Zoology, she worked as a tour guide on Whakaari and Moutohorā Islands, before working with Halo Whakatāne where she assisted the education coordinator in teaching tamariki about te taiao, planting trees, weeding, and doing pest control. Now, her life revolves around kiwi.
One of the hats that Gaia wears in her role with Save the Kiwi is managing the kiwi creche at Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary, one of New Zealand’s most premium golf courses that also doubles as a fenced, predator-free sanctuary for a range of native and exotic species including kiwi.
“During Covid I was a volunteer for Whakatāne Kiwi Trust, and I was fortunate enough to visit Wairakei with some of the other volunteers. I fell in love with the creche. It’s a super-fancy golf course with takahē, falcon, golden pheasants, tame fallow deer … and North Island brown kiwi. Every month I messaged Will Kahu who was managing the creche at the time, asking if I could come over and do some kiwi health checks, and eventually he obliged and shared the kiwi with me. About a year later Save the Kiwi gave me a contract to support him in the creche, and a year after that I took over management of the creche.”
On an average day at Wairakei, Gaia using telemetry gear to locate a kiwi chick (after “getting distracted by takahē” on the golf course).
“A number of chicks live in the land around the golf course and will be there until they reach about 1kg in weight, at which point they’ll be big enough to protect themselves from stoats. Every month I carry out a quick health check on them to check that they’re gaining weight, before letting them go to grow for another month.”
Locating kiwi isn’t always easy though.
“Some kiwi can be tricky to catch. It’s disappointing driving two hours to work for one health check only to find they’re asleep in a huge blackberry patch or down an impossible hole that you just can’t get to!”
There’s also the emotional attachment.
“Like working with any animals, you do get attached. Only seeing them once a month means I spend a lot of time wondering what they’re up to and if they’re doing okay.”
Gaia also supports annual kiwi transfers from Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, and trains up and coming kiwi handlers.
“Last season, we transferred a massive 222 kiwi from Maungatautari to their forever homes around the motu. A huge amount of work goes into planning a translocation this big, but it’s so rewarding to be a part of. It makes me feel like I’m doing something good for Aotearoa by working on this project.”
The training part of the job is also a joy.
“The kiwi work that goes on at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari is an incredible training ground,” says Gaia. “Last season it was incredible working with both people who had never seen a wild kiwi before and kiwi handlers who wanted to learn other skills. The people who do and want to do this work are really passionate about this mahi. It’s a privilege to work in this space with these people.”
Ultimately, it’s the future of the forest that drives Gaia’s work.
“Conservation is the thing I care most about,” Gaia says. “The kiwi is such a great species. They’re cute and enigmatic, and this gives the public reasons to get out and do pest control to protect them. Protecting kiwi has a huge flow on effect, it’s not just the kiwi that benefit; it’s the whole forest from the insects to the plants to the other birds. I really can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Gaia carries out a health check on a kiwi check at Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary.
Gaia uses telemetry gear to locate kiwi at the Wairakei Golf + Sanctuary.
Gaia trains up-and-coming kiwi handlers at the 2024 Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari kiwi transfer.
