Meet Gaia

Hi, I'm Gaia, and I work with
Save the Kiwi.

My role is catching kiwi
and organising volunteers.

So we're here just outside of
the southern enclosure at Maungatautari,

and we have a population of kiwi
that lives on the mountain.

So we have

a whole lot of volunteers that go out
and help us find them with kiwi dogs.

And then we pop them in the southern
enclosure for upwards of five days,

and then we go and catch them on Tuesdays
and Thursdays for translocation

to other areas.

I got into this work
originally by doing my Bachelor of Science

with honors
in zoology at Massey University.

So I've been obsessed with animals
my entire life,

and that's what I wanted to do
as a career.

I then began volunteering with a kiwi

organisation in Whakatāne
called the Whakatāne Kiwi Trust,

and through that I met Will from Save
the Kiwi and got involved.

Volunteered for about a year, learnt
how to handle kiwi, catch kiwi,

do everything kiwi
and then managed to get a job.

And I've been here for four years now.

So I keep coming back to Maungatautari
each year for the translocations,

helping find the kiwi
and moving them on to their forever homes.

So I didn't know,
when I was at university

that I'd become obsessed with kiwi.

But I am fully obsessed with kiwi now,
so I'm a crazy cat lady

and a crazy kiwi lady.

I love them.

I have chicks that grow from an egg,
and then I get to know them

when they're really little, all the way
until that over a kilo.

I love getting to know them,
seeing how they change as they get older,

how much smarter

and more wily they get, learning
how to run away from me sometimes.

I love getting to know them.

I like having the siblings and seeing
how similar or different they are

and just seeing a whole lot of kiwi
each day, the differences in them,

and it's just so rewarding, knowing
that we're being able to help these birds

and, yeah, I love kiwi.