Dog Toy Pulled From Store for Being Offensive to National Bird
A New Zealand hardware store has pulled a dog toy from its shelves following complaints that it is offensive to the country's national bird.
Mitre 10, a New Zealand company in existence for nearly 50 years that sells a wide range of products, has reportedly pulled a $13 Christmas-themed kiwi bird dog toy due to conservationists saying it reduces the prestige of the country's national bird—which in recent years has faced population woes and has been a focus of renewed efforts to stabilize the species.
"The optics of a dog chewing a kiwi is just wrong," said Save the Kiwi CEO Michelle Impey, whose organization reached out to Mitre 10 after seeing posts on social media about the toy. "We don't want to see a kiwi in a dog's mouth."
New Zealand media organization Stuff first reported the development. Newsweek reached out to Save the Kiwi and Mitre 10 via email for comment.
Save the Kiwi works with other conservation groups, organizations, communities, and the country's Department of Conservation to combat a drastic population decrease of the kiwi bird—which cannot fly and has been a mainstay of New Zealand for an estimated 60 million years.
But deforestation and predators, including stoats, ferrets, cats, pigs, dogs and possums, have caused a decline in recent years. Save the Kiwi says that in areas where such predators are intensively controlled, kiwi hatching increases typically by 50 to 60 percent. That sustainability requires a 20 percent survival rate.
It is estimated that 20 kiwi birds, on average, are killed by predators every week, or about 1,400 per year. Of those that are killed, approximately 95 percent of them die before reaching breeding age in areas that groups like Save the Kiwi are not managing.
While the national kiwi population has experienced an annual 2 percent decline, some areas of New Zealand are seeing nearly 10 percent increases due to conservation efforts.
The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC), which has worked with Save the Kiwi since 1991, has distributed more than $7 million to conservation projects across the nation. Save the Kiwi has raised and distributed more than $7 million to kiwi conservation projects across New Zealand. DOC and Save the Kiwi have been working in partnership since 1991.
The brown kiwi is one of New Zealand's most common kiwi species and is among the populations dropping 2-3 percent annually. The DOC estimates that limited support would result in extinction within two generations.
Conservationists recently discovered two kiwi chicks in Wellington. They are reportedly the first wild kiwi births recorded in the New Zealand capital in over 150 years.
"This is very special for the team, which has been working hard for the last few years," Capital City Kiwi project founder Paul Ward told the Agence France-Presse. The chicks are a "massive milestone for our goal of building a wild population of kiwi on Wellington's back doorstep."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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