Whakatāne Kiwi Trust is extremely grateful for the enthusiastic, nationwide response it has had in its search for lost kiwi, Tuati.

The trust’s kiwi tracking guide, Ken Laurent, said he had received calls from about 16 people. Everyone from ham radio operators to Department of Conservation staff from Northland to Dunedin had answered the call for help.

Tuati is a young male kiwi that was released into the Kōhī Point Scenic Reserve two years ago. The transmitter fitted to his leg is tracked by the trust to monitor his movements using telemetry instruments – or “pingers”.

However, in the past two months, his signal has been overridden by a much stronger one on the same channel, leaving the trust’s kiwi trackers unable to find him.

“People from all over the place want to help. It’s amazing,” Mr Laurent said.

He has even been sent some more advanced telemetry equipment from Dunedin. Locally, Horizon Energy had contacted him to help ensure it was not any of its equipment interfering with the signal.

He said, most helpful of all, was a visit from radio spectrum investigator Mervyn Frericks, who travelled from Hamilton with some specialist equipment to try to help them locate Tuati.

Mr Frericks works with Radio Spectrum Management, a business unit of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment responsible for allocating rights for use of the radio spectrum and enforcing compliance with licensing requirements.

While Mr Frericks was not able to find the kiwi, he is hopeful he will be located soon.

Radio Spectrum Management New Zealand investigator Mervyn Frericks (centre) with Kiwi Trust kiwi trackers Rick Boon and Ken Laurent investigate around the Whakatāne town wharf, searching for a rogue signal that is overriding a kiwi transmitter.

“The important work that the Whakatāne Kiwi Trust does is well known and when the team heard about the issues they were having, we were keen to try and help out,” Mr Frericks said.

“We’ve some pretty good equipment available to us and after arriving at the reserve, we were able to work with the trust’s volunteers to minimise the unwanted signals affecting their search. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful in finding Tuati on the day but, hopefully, they’ll be able to locate him soon.”

Mr Laurent is grateful for the interest being shown and hopes Mr Frericks will visit again.

“We have a suspicion that the transmitter may have failed, but we’re still getting this overriding beat which is not helping.”

Mr Laurent suspects the overriding signal may be coming from a nearby cell tower.

“I have asked if they could come back and resume the search, which I think they are willing to do.”

He said Whakatāne’s unique situation of having kiwi living in areas of forest reserve within town was working against it in this instance.

“Normally, you don’t have a kiwi so close to an urban environment. In our case, we’ve got them all around town, so it’s hard to get away from all the interference that’s going on.”

He said the trust had received a lot of helpful advice around selecting frequencies that could be used.

“Over channel 47 it’s restricted to the DoC channels but under that it’s open slather, so we’ve got to try to put transmitters on a kiwi that have channel numbers that are over that frequency. I’m learning a lot about it.”

Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.