Twelve feisty weka were released on to the slopes of the Kaimai Range yesterday.
The adult birds will be housed in a secret aviary off the loop track up from the Aongatete Education Centre Carpark, between Tauranga and Katikati, for the next six weeks.
More birds will join them today and tomorrow with the aim of bringing the population up to about 40.
After six weeks they will be released into the wild to make a new home in the ranges.
Forest and Bird volunteer Ann Graeme said the native birds used to populate the area but had not lived there for years.
Poultry diseases brought in by settlers, dogs and stoats were the main reason the birds were no longer found in the area, she said.
Pest control across 500ha of forest during the last nine years, targeting rats, possums and stoats, meant the forest was a suitable home for the birds again.
"The forest is so quiet, there is so little up there. We've got to keep the weka in and the stoats out. We used to come up here in the 70s and these birds where here then, then they just weren't. Already we have noticed the bush robins and the little riflemen have appeared again.
"A few little survivors hang on and nobody notices them but when given a chance they can breed."
The 12 birds were released into the aviary by Matahui School children and Forest and Bird throughout the morning and volunteers will go up and feed and water them over the next six weeks.
Mrs Graeme said there would be more males than females in the batch of birds released yesterday but more birds being caught from Opotiki would balance the population. She expected a number of the birds would be lost over time.
"Because all sorts of accidents do happen, we will lose some."
The same exercise would be repeated to boost the numbers again next year.
Hopefully the birds would start breeding with chicks being born this spring.
Matahui School student Fern Robertson, 9, was very happy she was able to help release the bird into the forest.
"It was cool," she said.
- By Ruth Keber of the Bay of Plenty Times
