There was news report in Japan that the last remaining kiwi, named "Pukunui" passed away in Japan.
The original source describes that "The national bird of New Zealand, Kiwi. In Japan, Tennoji Zoo (Osaka, Japan) was the only zoo with kiwi birds. The last kiwi at the Tennoji Zoo, Pukunui, was announced dead on 5th August 2024".
BuzzNewz (Japanese site)
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/3b03b6f52869b8762358bb8077f73d9b5cabbbe5
Oh no!! NO KIWI birds in Japan.
While animal enclosures at zoo is a topic for debate for animal ethic reasons, it is also true that animals from other countries are a wonderful way to educate people about different countries. For example, Japan pays a significant amount of "rental fee" to China each year to have Panda in Japanese zoo. I imagine kiwi birds were sent to Japan too as embassedor to culturally connect Japan and New Zealand.
Pukunui, the kiwi bird which passed away, was 36-year-old. According to Sankei news, Pukunui was a female kiwi bird, born in 1988 in New Zealand, arrived in Japan in July 1991.
Original article Sankei News (Japanese) https://www.sankei.com/
This is such a long time ago and I had no idea that kiwi birds live so long. Pukunui was paired with another male bird "Jun" which had passed away at 42-year-old, in July this year. So two were a pair for a long time together, and died almost together.
This is apparently equivalent of 70-80 year-old human. Staff at Tennoji Zoo must have looked after Pukunui and Jun very well, to live well until the old age.
Wild life conservation is a very important matter and keeping the native animal (e.g. Kiwi) in captivity in another country may not be possible. But As a Japanese, it's a little sad that Japanese children will no longer have options to see Kiwi birds in Japan and hope that there are other opportunities/means for them to learn about amazing kiwi birds their home country, Aotearoa New Zealand.
