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At the foot of a towering fern, Pete Kirkman pushed his hand through a curtain of dead branches into a burrow. His fingers settled on a lump of feathers. Gently, he withdrew a fist-sized hatchling.<\/p>\n
Baffled by the daylight, the chocolate-colored nocturnal bird shook its pencil-like beak from side to side. \u201cYou\u2019re OK,\u201d Mr. Kirkman, a conservationist, said soothingly, as he made the discovery last week. Then he heard a scratching from the burrow. He watched in delight as another hatchling charged out, searching for its sibling, and fell into his arms.<\/p>\n
The kiwi \u2014 a native bird so beloved by New Zealanders that its name has long been a shorthand for them \u2014 once roamed throughout the country. Starting in the 1800s, millions were slaughtered by nonnative predators like stoats, a mammal related to the weasel. Now only 70,000 or so kiwis remain, most in remote parks or islands. Accordingly, any hatchling is special. These two, however, were remarkable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The burrow they were born in lies three miles west of Wellington, New Zealand\u2019s capital, in the suburb of Makara. The bustling city\u2019s dangers meant that the kiwi vanished from this part of the country for more than a century. But last year, following a half-decade effort to reduce stoat and rat numbers, dozens of kiwis were reintroduced to the hilly farmlands of Makara.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The two hatchlings found by Mr. Kirkman were the first to be born in the wild in the Wellington area in living memory, experts said. While Mr. Kirkman cautioned that they still need to survive their fragile childhood, he called it a \u201cspecial moment\u201d in the push to make the kiwi a permanent part of the city\u2019s landscape.<\/p>\n
The resurrection of the kiwi is part of an intensive government program established in 2016 with a highly aspirational goal: eliminate most nonnative avian predators from the country by 2050. Many were introduced by humans. For instance, stoats were brought to New Zealand in the 1800s<\/a> as a way to reduce the number of rabbits \u2014 themselves shipped in by humans<\/a> \u2014 that were destroying sheep pastures.<\/p>\n