23/08/2026
In support of Kaikōura’s kororā...
My opinion - not that of council:
To the Minister of Conservation, Minister for Biosecurity, Department of Conservation and Ministry for Primary Industries
20 August 2026
An open letter: Please protect Kaikōura’s kororā before it is too late
I am writing to ask the Government, the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries to urgently reconsider access to H5N1 vaccination for the small and vulnerable population of kororā/little penguins on the Kaikōura Peninsula.
I appreciate that difficult decisions have to be made about which species and populations are prioritised for vaccination, and that DOC has focused initially on some of our most threatened endemic species.
But the circumstances facing Kaikōura’s kororā deserve specific consideration.
There are only around 50 kororā remaining on the Kaikōura Peninsula.
The Kaikōura Peninsula is recognised as an area of significant biodiversity value and as a Biodiversity Priority Site. Kororā are classified as At Risk–Declining, and local researchers believe this population has declined substantially over the past decade, placing it at risk of local extinction.
This is not an unmanaged population.
Years of work have gone into keeping these birds alive.
The Kaikōura Wildlife Centre Trust and its volunteers monitor colonies, provide nesting boxes, rehabilitate sick and starving birds, undertake predator control, protect habitat and educate the community.
Significant effort and resources have already gone into fenced penguin safe zones, predator control, habitat protection and rehabilitation.
The birds nevertheless remain under considerable pressure.
They face habitat degradation, human disturbance, dog attacks, cats and introduced predators, fisheries interactions, changing marine conditions, reduced food availability, starvation and reduced breeding success.
H5N1 therefore does not represent a single threat arriving in an otherwise healthy population.
It is an additional potentially catastrophic pressure on a population already struggling to persist.
There is another dimension that makes Kaikōura particularly concerning.
A significant proportion of these kororā require some level of care during breeding and/or moulting seasons. If H5N1 arrives, the Kaikōura Wildlife Centre Trust may have to stop receiving and treating unwell penguins.
The population could therefore suffer losses in two ways: directly through the virus and indirectly through the temporary loss of the rehabilitation and veterinary care that currently helps keep these birds alive.
Australia should be a warning to us
Events unfolding across the Tasman make the need for precaution increasingly difficult to ignore.
H5 avian influenza has now been detected in Australian wildlife.
Today we have also learned that 28 little penguins have been found dead at the Port of Grassy on King Island, Tasmania, along with three crested terns.
Those deaths are being tested and, at the time of writing, H5 has not been confirmed as their cause. That distinction is important.
But the deaths have occurred in the context of an active H5 response in Tasmania and confirmed H5 detections in wild birds.
Twenty-eight little penguins.
For perspective, that is more than half the approximate size of the entire remaining Kaikōura Peninsula population.
We cannot know whether an outbreak here would produce the same mortality.
But that is precisely the point of precaution.
If we wait until dozens of birds are dying in Kaikōura before reconsidering vaccination, the decision may come too late to make a meaningful difference.
National extinction is not the only measure of biodiversity loss
DOC has explained that its vaccination programme is prioritising species with very small populations and those at greatest risk of national extinction, and that kororā do not currently meet those criteria.
I understand that reasoning.
But I ask DOC and Ministers to consider a different question:
Must we wait until an entire species is threatened with extinction before preventative intervention is justified?
A species can remain secure nationally while a distinctive and ecologically important local population disappears.
Local extinction is still extinction.
The loss of Kaikōura’s kororā would not somehow cease to matter because kororā survive elsewhere in New Zealand or Australia.
The ecological significance and vulnerability of individual populations and habitats matter too.
This is also a question about discretion
I am particularly concerned that there remains little public clarity about how exceptions or discretionary vaccination decisions can be made.
The Kaikōura Wildlife Centre Trust is not simply asking the Government to assume the entire cost and responsibility for protecting these birds.
There is local expertise, established monitoring, volunteers, infrastructure and considerable community commitment already in place.
If appropriate veterinary expertise can be provided and the costs met, then Government should explain clearly why access to vaccination cannot be considered.
If the barrier is regulatory, tell us what it is.
If the barrier is scientific, provide the evidence.
If it is logistical, let us work together to solve it.
And if discretion exists, please explain how that discretion can be exercised.
Prevention is the point
New Zealand has an opportunity that countries already dealing with major wildlife outbreaks did not necessarily have.
We have warning.
We have international experience.
We have surveillance.
We have a vaccine.
And in Kaikōura we have a small, known and intensively monitored population for which preventative intervention may still be possible.
The purpose of preventative conservation is not to wait until the evidence consists of dead animals.
For a population of approximately 50 birds, the margin for error is extraordinarily small.
I therefore respectfully ask the Minister of Conservation, the Minister for Biosecurity, DOC and MPI to urgently undertake a specific assessment of the Kaikōura Peninsula kororā population for preventative H5N1 vaccination, taking into account its local extinction risk, cumulative pressures, dependence on rehabilitation, existing conservation effort and the rapidly developing international evidence.
I also ask that the criteria, evidence and discretionary pathway governing that decision be made transparent.
There will always be uncertainty in responding to an emerging disease, but uncertainty cuts both ways.
It should not become a reason to postpone a proportionate preventative intervention until the very event we are trying to prevent has occurred.
Please assess these birds while we still have the opportunity to protect them - not after we are counting those we have lost.
Genevieve Robinson
