Kiwi kids build website to save nation's mascot

A group of young Warkworth Primary School students have designed a website to help raise funds to 'save the Kiwi'.

The 6 and 7-year-olds filled the website with hand drawn pictures and letters, featuring information about the Kiwi as well as encouragement to donate toward the cause.

The site also features a number of videos from classroom groups as well as individual students, all calling for donations to help save New Zealand's Kiwi.

On the site people can buy the children's posters, learn more about where the money will be spent and meet the children behind the project.

The website has raised enough money for the children to sponsor of a new Kiwi chick, Cuddles.

Cuddles is from the Coromandel and is now in an outside aviary and steadily gaining weight. He/she now weighs 559g and is gaining a healthy 73g a week.

Teacher Jo Gormley says the students have absolutely amazed her with their enthusiasm and passion.

"They've come up with some imaginative ideas along the way, including saving the Kiwi from possum by putting rotten eggs in Kiwi nests to trick them!

"With a bit of investigating they then discovered that you can look after eggs in incubators and thought that sounded like a way better idea, so they set out to raise the $1,200 it costs to look after a kiwi chick."

Gormley used to work at Rainbow Springs in Rotorua, where Kiwi Encounter New Zealand's largest hatchery of Brown Kiwi is housed, so she approached the park about the kids' idea.

She says it was received with great enthusiasm, and it was Rainbow Springs that helped the kids sponsor a Kiwi chick.