Native hawks are revered by those who come to know them. And yet we’ve been slaughtering them for a century and a half. Why?

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Our relationship with the natural world is, let's say, complicated. We revere our flightless kiwi, yet haul up endangered fish like whitebait and eat them. We introduced possums and stoats for the fur trade, but they have demolished our flora and fauna and we're spending millions to eradicate them. Today we may regret the mass culling of kea, but we're still shooting the magnificent kāhu out of the sky.

Is it an artefact of changing culture? Or is our species just particularly poor at evaluating long-term consequences?

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Craig Mckenzie

WILDLIFE

We’ve been slaughtering native hawks, kāhu, for a century and a half. Why?

There is perhaps no New Zealand bird—native or exotic—that has been vilified, persecuted, and hated like the kāhu.

Kāhu are native; they likely self-introduced by flying across the Tasman from Australia around a thousand years ago, just as humans were beginning to reshape this land forever.

Now they’re at the top of our avian feeding chain, ruling the roost with the kārearea/New Zealand falcon. These predators perform vital roles in the ecosystem, cleaning up carrion and keeping smaller birds and rodents in check.

Kāhu search for food from great altitude, scanning the ground below with their incredible eyesight, or hunt just metres above the ground, working over grass or rushes in a slow “quartering” hover before dropping on their prey.

Māori hold kāhu in high esteem, revering them for their hunting skills and noble bearing. They are seen as allies, particularly in regards to mahinga kai—food gathering.

“Kāhu have always been right through our creation stories,” says Clint McConchie, of Ngāti Kuri, a Kaikōura-based subtribe of Ngāi Tahu. “The kāhu are the eyes. They are the watchers.”

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