The banded chicks came home: ten years of bringing Dunedin's seabirds back is working

A decade ago, Forest & Bird volunteers found seabird burrows still holding on at Sandfly Bay near Dunedin and decided to fight for them — trapping pest mammals across four coastal sites, season after season. The tītī (sooty shearwaters) answered: more than 100 chicks fledged from Sandfly Bay in 2022 alone, the first fairy prion chick fledged at St Clair cliffs in 2025, and — the surest sign of all — chicks banded as youngsters are now returning as adults to breed, with returns recorded every year since December 2023 and the first banded chick back at Irahuka in February 2026. Ten years of Bring Back the Seabirds, measured in homecomings.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: community action