Mount Maunganui's Sheryl Petersen loves spending time in the New Zealand bush, and especially if it involves hanging out with our country's most beloved bird.

Her love of kiwi and her many years of hard work fighting to protect them in their natural habitat has earned her a Good Egg Award at the inaugural Kiwi Awards.

The awards were created by Kiwis for Kiwi, an independent charity supporting kiwi conservation groups around the country.

Sheryl's Good Egg Award was for her work with the eastern brown kiwi on behalf of the Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust.

She joined the group as a volunteer in 2003, initially clearing and marking trap lines, before progressing to running toxin programmes for the control of rats and possums and joining the kiwi monitoring team, carrying out health checks, transmitter changes and egg lifts as part of the Operation Nest Egg national programme.

She now manages the Otanewainuku Forest kiwi programme and is devoted to the recovery of kiwi.

'It's fabulous to be recognised. I've certainly put in a lot of time over a lot of years for them,” she says of her award.

Sheryl was inspired to work with kiwi after doing the Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk in the early 2000s and seeing how successful the kiwi-proof fence there had been.

'The birdlife there was fabulous – noticeably better than the rest of the bush – so when I got back I joined the Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust and I've been with them ever since,” she says.

Sheryl reckons she's probably spent about 120 days in the bush over the past 12 months for the trust, as well as keeping the kiwi register up-to-date. It's meant a curtailment of her second love – tramping – but her love of kiwi knows no bounds.

'I'll never lose the buzz of picking up a bird,” says Sheryl. 'They're such special creatures. All of us who do the kiwi handling love sharing the experience with others if there's an opportunity. We always try and get our sponsors along so they can meet their birds.”

Sheryl says we need our native birds to restore the bush to how it once was.

'It's our heritage. Humans have intervened in a huge way and disrupted the natural balance of things. What we are trying to do is restore the entire Otanewainuku ecosystem as much as we can.

'It's not possible to bring everything back, but we can get rid of the pests and we can help the creatures that are supposed to be living there to survive and flourish.”

Tauranga company Pacific Collections – wholesaler and distributor of Wild Kiwi clothing – also received a Kiwi Award for Community Corporate Sponsor of the Year.

The company has been sponsoring the Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust for five years. Aside from cash donations, Pacific Collections donate prizes for volunteer ‘thank you' days, gifts Wild Kiwi-branded clothing to the hard-working kiwi team and encourages its staff to attend field-work days.

Two years ago Pacific Collections launched a new bandana with a contribution to Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust coming from each unit sold. This initiative has been a huge success, with more than $10,000 donated to the project in the past 12 months alone.

The Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust is holding its annual general meeting on Monday, July 2 including guest speaker Michelle Impey, the executive director of Kiwis for Kiwi, sharing the ‘State of the kiwi nation'.

The meeting will be held in the H110 lecture room at Toi Ohomai, 70 Windermere Drive, Poike from 7pm followed by supper at 8.30pm. Gold coin donation welcomed.