Conservation Minister Maggie Barry has announced the Coromandel will receive funding to help New Zealand's national birds to thrive in the wild.

Coromandel is one of three regions (West Coast and Northland) who will benefit from the $226,000 from the Community Conservation Partnerships Fund which will go towards projects in the regions.

'These three projects are deserving recipients of CCPF funding,” Maggie says. 'Together with our $2.13 million investment in 31 other pest control initiatives announced last week, we are determined to enable community groups and volunteers to make gains for conservation.”

The funding comes in addition to the $11.2 million commitment to kiwi recovery announced in Budget 2015, which included $3.5 million for independent charitable trust Kiwis for Kiwi to distribute to community groups.

'Our national bird is declining in the wild by 2 per cent a year, with only around 70,000 birds left in isolated, fragmented populations,” Maggie says.

'They could be extinct in the wild within our grandchildren's lifetimes. We know that by supporting community groups and boosting DOC's own work with kiwi, we can reach our goal of turning that decline into a 2 per cent increase.”

Thames Coast Kiwi Care will receive $39,000 to continue a co-ordinator role overseeing stoat trapping, predator control and monitoring of the Coromandel brown kiwi population in the Te Mata Valley.

The other groups receiving CCPF funding are:

Friends of Flora - $103,863 to translocate up to 12 great spotted kiwi into the Flora project area in Kahurangi National Park, increasing genetic diversity in the local population.

Te Runanga o Te Rarawa - $83,616 for the Warawara Restoration project in Northland, enabling a new kiwi aversion training programme for dogs, development of a dog control strategy and community advocacy.