These are spread over approximately 40 kilometres to the north and east of Whangarei city. Six separate forest areas, ranging in size from 70 hectares to more than 700 hectares, make up the management area where stoats, ferrets and cats are controlled.

The sanctuary varies in topography from the broken volcanic landscape of Bream Head to extinct small volcanic cones of a less rugged nature. An Operation Nest Egg programme is being used within the sanctuary to repopulate Bream Head, one of the sanctuary’s larger forest blocks, and also to investigate the effectiveness of this programme for recruiting birds into the breeding population.

To date the work here and at another site (Hodges Bush) have been very successful with, most unusually, some birds breeding in just their second year.

Bream Head was thought to have had little more than six kiwi before the Operation Nest Egg programme was started there. The Bream Head population has now been augmented with 20 birds from Operation Nest Egg, with more growing on ‘creche’ islands for future releases. The kiwi population within the remaining reserves is not known exactly, but numbers into the hundreds.

High community support for the sanctuary has been a feature. Public awareness programmes have lifted understanding among local communities of the need to keep dogs and predators under control.

In the 2001/02 year, 48 kiwi pairs were monitored, however, technical problems made it difficult to determine how many chicks survived. These issues will be overcome for the coming breeding season.