Having a super-loud music fest just over the fence from rare birds breeding was ‘‘terrible timing’’, Kiwi Park’s wildlife manager says.

Attracting about 5000 punters, Snow Machine ran over three nights last week on the Queenstown Primary School grounds — its amplified music could be heard for miles.

Al Browne says during Thursday’s sound check they removed two kiwi eggs male birds had been incubating just 10 to 15 metres from the main stage.

‘‘I heard that [sound] and thought, ‘no way, I’m absolutely not going to take that risk’ … just ’cos large noises and things like that can cause your male to panic and break the eggs himself.

‘‘We’ve got space onsite to artificially incubate them.’’

Browne says ideally they’d have waited another month before removing the eggs, or about a month before they were due to hatch — ‘‘the longer you leave them, the higher the chance of success’’.

Ironically, kiwi were originally housed near Skyline’s gondola, but were relocated due to that company’s redevelopment work.

Browne says not just their kiwi were affected — ‘‘about half of our species are just starting to lay eggs and incubate, like, the more we can reduce noise at this time of year, the better.

‘‘We saw quite a lot of stress around the park from birds — we saw increased aggression, pacing, things like that.’’

Festival director Quentin Nolan says he’d been in constant communication with Kiwi Park’s owners — ‘‘I provided detail on the event,
the site maps and the acoustic report, and we got affected party approval signed by them.

‘‘They asked us not to do sound checks while they were doing shows, and they asked us to put a security guard in the park to make sure there were no fence jumpers or any thing.’’

Benefits outweigh noise: Snow Machine director Quentin Nolan

Nolan says he’s making a $2000 donation to the park and would like to work in with them if the event’s held there again.

‘‘If there’s some labour involved in, like, moving the eggs or whatnot, we want to contribute to that — I want to be a good neighbour and work with all these businesses.’’

Nolan believes their noise level was within consented limits.

He wanted to hold the festival in central Queenstown — it was to go on nearby Warren Park till a big hole dug on Fryer Street created access
issues — to help CBD businesses.

‘‘There’s basically $15 million of investment, and it’s gone through a whole range of businesses that have been the worst affected through Covid.

‘‘I recognise the noise has caused some disturbance to some people, but I also think the benefit has far outweighed that.’’

Meanwhile, council’s comms man Sam White says they received 18 noise complaints from 10 individuals.

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