A red-crowned parakeet - one of 14 released at Tawharanui Regional Park at the weekend.Chattering red-crowned kakariki can be heard again on Auckland’s mainland for the first time in a century, following a successful Massey University-led release of the species at Tawharanui Regional Park at the weekend.

Luis Ortiz-Catedral releases one of 14 kakariki, before Associate Professor Dianne Brunton (right), his doctoral supervisor at Massey’s Institute of Natural Sciences, releases the next bird.Fourteen of the bright green parakeets were transported by helicopter from Hauturu (Little Barrier Island) in the Hauraki Gulf to Tawharanui’s Open Sanctuary as part of a project by doctoral conservation researcher Luis Ortiz-Catedral, from the Institute of Natural Sciences at Albany.

Mr Ortiz-Catedral says the current pest management plans at the 588ha park, north of Auckland, will enable the kakariki to thrive.

About 80 conservationists and onlookers gathered around the 14 cardboard carry boxes containing the parakeets, which were released one by one into native forest on the coastal sanctuary.
The new arrivals joined noisily chortling bellbirds, tui and wood pigeons as well as re-introduced threatened native species including kiwi, robins, whitehead and green gecko in the predator-free environment developed by volunteers of the Tawharanui Open Sanctuary Society.

More kakariki will be brought over next month to top up the numbers and to ensure a sufficient founder population is established at Tawharanui, New Zealand’s first integrated open sanctuary, combining farming, public recreation and conservation of native species.

Mr Ortiz-Catedral says high winds made catching the kakariki “challenging”. He and groups of volunteers used mist nets around Little Barrier’s shoreline to capture kakariki from the island’s abundant population before transferring them to an aviary where they were weighed, measured and given health checks. Four of the birds have transmitters and the rest have individual coloured tags so they can be easily monitored and observed.

It is hoped their numbers will quickly increase. Kakariki use diverse nesting sites, form breeding pairs at an early age and can lay up to 16 eggs in a single breeding season. Mr Ortiz-Catedral says kakariki he translocated from Little Barrier to Motuihe Island in the Hauraki Gulf a year ago have been breeding successfully in their new habitat.

Kakariki were once common and widespread and even found in such large numbers they were culled as orchard pests, but are now almost exclusively restricted to offshore islands free of introduced predators such as cats, rats, stoats and ferrets.  There are small populations in the Pureora Forest and Ruahine Ranges in the eastern and central North Island.

Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee dedicated the release of the birds to Geoff Moon, world-renowned conservationist, photographer of New Zealand birds and landscape, and veterinarian, who died recently.