A employees member of a conservation group holds a kiwi chicken throughout an occasion at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, Tuesday, April 28, 2026.
| Photograph Credit score: AP
The kiwi, New Zealand’s sacred nationwide chicken, vanished from the hills round Wellington greater than a century in the past. Now the capital’s residents are waging an inconceivable citizen marketing campaign to return the endangered flightless birds to town.
“They’re part of who we’re and our sense of belonging right here,” stated Paul Ward, founding father of the Capital Kiwi Undertaking, a charitable belief. “However they’ve been gone from these hills for properly over a century and we determined as Wellingtonians that wasn’t proper.”
On a hill wreathed in mist above the darkish sea that runs between New Zealand’s North and South Islands, Mr. Ward and others crossed rugged farmland late on Tuesday (April 28, 2026) evening, carrying seven crates in silence by dim purple torchlight. Inside every one nestled a kiwi, together with the 250th chicken relocated to Wellington because the Capital Kiwi Undertaking started.
Printed – Might 01, 2026 12:17 pm IST