For 34 years, Robert and Robyn Webb have been the steady, familiar faces of the Whangārei Native Bird Recovery Centre.
Now, in their retirement years, the couple is at odds with the Department of Conservation.
The centre has been fined $400 for a breach involving a kiwi chick, which Robert allowed a visitor to hold briefly while he went into the bird’s aviary.
The fine comes at a time when Robert feels there is growing internal tension within the centre’s committee.
It’s a tough pill to swallow for the couple which founded, funded, and built the centre into the Northland institution it has become, working seven days a week for decades without taking a wage.
Robert believes the fine is unfair and disproportionate, saying it reflected a broader shift away from the nuanced, common-sense approach on which he and Robyn built the centre when it first opened in 1992.
DoC, however, says the enforcement action was necessary and followed repeated breaches of the centre’s wildlife permit.
Dylan Swain, DoC’s team lead for wildlife crime said kiwi permits require handlers – Robert being one – to follow a best practice manual.
The manual states that during advocacy encounters, kiwi may only be held by an approved kiwi handler, to protect the bird’s welfare.
Swain said Robert was advised he would receive a fine and a warning letter – the fine for unauthorised handling of a juvenile kiwi, and the warning for four other breaches of permissions.
DoC also offered Robert support to help the trust become compliant, Swain said.
He believed the centre was receptive when DoC staff visited yesterday.
“We value the work of the Whangārei Native Bird Recovery Centre, but repeated breaches of the permit since 2019 have required us to take action,” Swain said.
DoC had not approved any member of the public holding the chick involved, he said.
Robert said the incident lasted seconds and he would not have allowed it if he thought there was any risk to the kiwi.
It was a common-sense discretionary call he has made for years, without any ill effect.
It was only noticed because the visitor later posted a photograph on social media.
Robert pointed to the centre’s long-lived resident kiwi Sparky, who came to the centre as a chick 23 years ago.
He has since travelled to schools around the country with DoC’s blessing.
Robert recalled times when he would sit Sparky on his knee and allow school children to pat Sparky’s back as they filed out of sessions.
“They knew exactly what we did. Now suddenly it’s all wrong,” Webb said.
He rejected DoC’s claim it had never authorised similar public handling of kiwi, pointing to an occasion when former Prime Minister Helen Clark was allowed to hold a chick with departmental approval.
Swain said DoC had no record of the incident and noted that rules and best practice had since changed, making such handling unlikely to be permitted today.
Robert fears tourists will stop visiting if they are no longer allowed to view a kiwi or see the native birds recovering in the enclosures at the back of the centre – access DoC also wants to restrict.
He believes those kinds of proposals would cause the centre to fail and eventually close and “it will be the birds that will suffer,” he said.
Robert noted he and Robyn have long saved DoC time, money, and logistical effort by responding to callouts that rangers would otherwise struggle to reach quickly.
“DoC ring me on weekends about birds out at different beaches. By the time they get a vehicle released and get permission to go out, the bird would be dead. We can have a local pick it up and courier it in.”
That on-the-ground responsiveness is part of what has kept the centre effective for decades, Robert said.
Recent committee decisions have left Robert and Robyn feeling increasingly sidelined, he said.
He believes the stress may have contributed to his recent hospital stay for a heart issue.
The brewing situation at the centre feels like “out with the old, in with the new”, Robert said.
“We’ve given our lives to this place.”
Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, most of which she spent reporting on the courts in Gisborne and the East Coast.