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Cape Kidnappers conservation reserve - Source: ONE News -
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Another group of New Zealand's rarest ducks will be released on Friday in the Cape Kidnappers and Ocean Beach Wildlife Preserve.
Sixty captive-reared native pateke, sometimes called brown teal, will join others released at the same site last year.
The birds are half the size of the common mallard and live a nocturnal life, resting under waterside vegetation by day and emerging at night to hunt insects on land.
Once widespread, pateke numbers have fallen dramatically to about 1200 since the late 19th century, the birds easy targets for cats, ferrets and stoats.
But behind Cape Kidnappers sanctuary's 9.6km predator-proof fence, intensive trapping and poisoning have reduced predator numbers to almost zero.
Several of the young birds released last year on a sanctuary pond paired up and at least one pair bred successfully, Landcare NZ ornithologist Dr John McLennan said.
Inside the fence, not one pateke was killed by a predator, but a number of birds that flew out did not survive.
Banrock Station Wines fund the bird-release project which is organised by Wetland Care New Zealand.
The 2400-ha Cape Kidnappers and Ocean Beach Wildlife Preserve is the biggest ecological restoration project in New Zealand.
The sanctuary is also a refuge for other endangered species among them kiwi, tomtits, whiteheads, riflemen and North Island robins.
There are plans for releases of red-crowned parakeet, fluttering shearwater, saddleback and takahe.
