Kiwi used to be common in New Zealand - as many as 12 million of them lived all over the country.

Maori arrived over a thousand years ago and began hunting kiwi for meat, skin, and feathers. Sometimes the hunters went out with dogs and flaming torches, and at other times they used traps.

Maori had several names for kiwi. The word' kiwi' is a Maori word which copies the sound the kiwi makes when it calls.
The Great Spotted Kiwi was known as 'roa', and tokoeka is also a Maori name - meaning 'weka with a walking stick'.

Maori used the feathers (and sometimes the skins) to make special cloaks called 'kahu'. The shaft of the feathers (the harder piece in the centre) were sewn into a cloak made of flax.

Europeans first saw kiwi early in the 1800's. A ship's captain took a kiwi skin back to England and took it to the British Museum. He gave it a scientific name, described it, and an artist tried to make a picture of it. They published a report which interested a lot of people. Scientists weren't sure at first whether it was a trick or an exciting discovery.

As more and more people came to New Zealand they did many things which harmed the kiwi:

• they cleared land to grow food and feed animals - less bush for kiwi to live in
• they brought dogs with them - dogs are hunting animals and ground birds are easy to hunt
• they introduced animals for food like rabbits, and later deer and goats -
  these animals change the way the forest and bush grow
• they introduced other animals to control rabbits - stoats, ferrets and
  weasles - these eat eggs and kill chicks
• they cut down trees for wood to build houses and make things
• for a while people hunted kiwi to send to museums or for their feathers - these were used to decorate clothing
  

By the end of the century people began to see what was happening to kiwi and in 1896 kiwi were made 'protected' birds. This means that no-one is allowed to kill them. Some were put on special islands , like Kapiti Island off the coast of Wellington.