Kiwis are New Zealand's national bird and face existential threats from introduced predators — their welfare and the conservation programs protecting them.
Kiwi welfare in the wild is shaped entirely by predator pressure. Stoat predation causes the deaths of individual chicks in ways that involve pursuit, injury, and an acute fear response before death. At the population level, the welfare cost of near-100% chick mortality in unprotected areas is an existential threat — populations without intervention decline to local extinction. Operation Nest Egg and predator control programs directly reduce individual welfare harm by eliminating the predation risk that causes most kiwi mortality. Supporting these programs is simultaneously a welfare and conservation intervention — reducing individual animal deaths from predation while sustaining wild kiwi populations.