Leia (yes, as in Princess) trots happily alongside me. We are headed towards a sign-up table in a gravel carpark in Haast, where Anya-Lucia Kruszewski, a Department of Conservation (DOC) trainer, is waiting to receive dogs and their owners.
Leia, an 18-month-old border collie, completed her first Kiwi Avoidance Training (KAT) with Anya and my partner only six months ago. We are back for her fifteen-minute test, to see what she can recall. It’s all new to me, however, so when Anya pops on a collar sporting a small black box, I ask warily, “How many volts is that?” She assures me that trainers are taught to tailor the ‘correction’ to each individual animal. It has nothing to do with size or breed, and everything to do with a dog’s reaction; a trainer starts low and works up as the dog begins to feel it, then landing “about there”. Every dog is different, and only an expert in reading dog behaviour will know what level to administer.
The three of us walk down an overgrown four-wheel track near the Haast River, which will serve as the “course”. Anya speaks as we walk. “We might see Leia put you between herself and the stimulus. Alternatively, she might take a wide berth around it, or avoid and walk past with no interaction at all. If so, any of those options will demonstrate the avoidant behaviour we want. I’ll only be issuing shocks if Leia goes in for a curious sniff or touch, to help encourage the avoidant behaviour.”
Anya intentionally lags behind as Leia and I continue. A freeze-dried baby blue penguin comes into view, and Leia shifts from my left side to my right side, putting me between her the bird. We keep walking, and Leia performs the same manoeuvre when we pass a taxidermically-stuffed kiwi, sat casually in fresh fragrant nesting material. At the end of the track, we spin around and do the dance once more. Anya is satisfied with Leia’s recall and avoidant behaviour, so we didn’t have to do any more rounds.
The training is complete, for now. Anya suggests we repeat the process in a year’s time, in line with the DOC recommendation that dogs be tested again within a year of their training, and annually after that until “strong avoidance” is shown consistently.
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Dogs must be at least six months old to partake in KAT, but once they pass that threshold, younger is better; juvenile animals tend to pick up the desired behaviour faster. Don’t worry, though, your old dog can still learn new tricks. A 2017 study, ‘Evaluation of an aversion-based program designed to reduce predation of native birds by dogs: An analysis of training records for 1156 dogs’ looked at 1,156 dogs across 1,647 aversion trainings. The study found that a full 100% of dogs showed avoidance behaviours after five annual trainings, regardless of age or breed. At the very least, they say that refreshers should be done every two to three years, as “dogs with a three-year gap or longer showed lower levels of avoidance, pointing to the importance of refreshers.”
In Aotearoa, dogs have served as companions (and sometimes workmates), since humans first got here. The first resident breed, kurī, arrived about 1000 years ago – legend has it that the celebrated navigator Kupe had his dog with him when he first reached Te Ika-a-Māui. More followed, and Māori used these stout, fox-like dogs for companionship, hunting, and sometimes for eating. Kurī became extinct shortly after the 1860s, when European settlers showed up with their canine mates; one theory is that they did not survive the breeding process with hounds from across the pond. If you’re curious about the original pup, you can still view a startled-looking taxidermied kurī at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Long before dogs and people arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, birds dominated our small islands, which had separated from the supercontinent Gondwana 80 million years ago. There were no native terrestrial mammals, and therefore no predators to threaten birds; this led to some evolutionary quirks, including flightlessness. There are more species of flightless birds (living and extinct) here than in any other country on earth. Of all of them, the kiwi is not simply the most famous ground dweller, but it symbolises Aotearoa and its people. It is also in deep trouble.
Kiwi once numbered in the millions. Today, according to the national conservation charity Save the Kiwi, only 68,000 remain, and numbers continue to decline. The Save the Kiwi website proffers some grim facts: “Fifty percent of all kiwi eggs fail to even hatch. Ninety percent of chicks that do hatch are dead within six months. Five percent or less reach adulthood.” Once they reach adulthood, kiwi can lay up to 200 eggs in a lifetime, meaning a devastating impact when even one dies. And the biggest threat to adult birds is dogs. The bird’s strong scent is enough to make any hound curious, and they can pick up kiwi calls from more than 100 metres away. Because kiwi lack a breast plate and critical chest muscles, a playful nudge from even the smallest pooch can be powerful enough to crush an adult bird.
With this in mind, DOC developed Kiwi Aversion Training for dogs in the mid-nineties. Around the same time, the 1996 Dog Control Act was passed. The Act outlines the obligation of dog owners, including in relation to wildlife, and there’s a cost for non-compliance: “Any dog found to have injured or killed protective wildlife, including kiwi, the owner can be fined up to $20,000 and/or three years jail.” While KAT is mostly targeted at “dogs with jobs”, as they have the highest likelihood of overlapping with the fragile bird, family pets can, and do, kill kiwi. Jointly run by DOC and Save the Kiwi, free aversion training sessions are now available across Aotearoa for any dog that lives near kiwi habitats, or that are likely to be taken into areas where they may encounter kiwi.
Both the KAT programme and the Dog Control Act came on the heels of some highly-publicised dog vs. kiwi events. In 1987, the “Waitangi dog incident” saw a single dog kill up to 400 kiwi in the Bay of Islands’ Waitangi State Forest over a six-week period. The Waitangi dog was probably living rough in the wild, but the Whakatane Kiwi Trust notes the damage domesticated animals can do as well: “in Northland between 1990 and 1995…. Of the 135 birds killed over those five years, 29 were killed by family pets—some dogs were with their owners but off the lead, and others were roaming at night.” How do we know? According to the KAT team, “forensic techniques now enable the DNA found in saliva from around the bite marks… to be analysed… and are sensitive enough to identify the actual individual—this means that a particular dog can be identified in the same way that DNA fingerprinting works to identify humans.” It’s a canine take on CSI Aotearoa. More recently, six kiwi were mauled to death in Northland’s Ōpua Forest near Paihia over a period of just two weeks last July. Owners letting their dogs exercise off leash was a suspected cause.
This is why, despite having a new KAT ticket in-hand, I couldn’t start taking Leia into National Parks. We were reminded by both Anya and the information handouts that her training did not make her completely “kiwi-proof” or “penguin-proof”. While a KAT certificate is useful when applying for hunting permits or working-dog assessments, it doesn’t award any land-access benefits for pets; and DOC recommends that dogs should be in control and/or on a lead where kiwi and penguins live, whether KAT has been done or not.
Dogs are awesome. But also, we humans have been responsible for a mass extinction of birdlife in Aotearoa and our canine companions are part of the problem. A fifteen-minute training session once a year is the least we can do to ensure our most beloved bird isn’t next.
KELSEY PORTER
