Ngāi Tahu has teamed up with the Department of Conservation (DoC) to try and establish a third wild population of our nationally vulnerable takahē.
They've released 18 takahē on Ngāi Tahu tribal property at Greenstone Station, in Otago.
And the cheeky native birds are eager to explore their new home - after all, takahē did live here decades ago.
"Just hearing the call of the takahē echoing around the valley, and thinking 'wow - this isn't a noise that has been heard here for hundreds of years'," said DoC's operations manager for kākāpō and takahē, Deidre Vercoe.
Ngāi Tahu and DoC are working together in the hope the endangered species will flourish into a third, thriving, wild population.
"The Greenstone Valley seems to have everything that takahē need. It's a large tussock-filled valley, [a] good forest edge habitat, [and there's] plenty of food sources," Vercoe told Newshub.
"We're hopeful they will do very well in the valley."
It's the fruit of decades of hard work.
Once thought to be extinct, there are now 500 takahē in New Zealand, as their population has been growing 8 percent each year.
"We're absolutely ecstatic in terms of seeing our taonga species back in their natural environment and especially in the Greenstone, which is a really dearly treasured place for us, in terms of being a settlement protection place," said Ngāi Tahu CEO Arihia Bennett.
This year marks 25 years since the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act, when Greenstone was returned to Ngāi Tahu.
"This effort here today adorns what we have done to date, said Tā Tipene O'Regan, rangatira of Ngāi Tahu.
"And we'll dream bigger dreams, and have other species and other things will occur here in the future," Tā Tipene told Newshub.
But success is not guaranteed.
"We'll be closely monitoring this population over the coming months and years it can take a long time to really understand if a site is suitable," Vercoe said.
"They're a part of our heritage, our lands and our place - the place in which we have a primary identity," Tā Tipene told Newshub.
The plan is to release more birds here next month, and possibly eventually expand beyond the Greenstone Valley.
