Whakaoranga Project

The Whakaoranga Project is a top-secret conservation project that was carried out in the heart of the South Island of New Zealand. The project's goal was to combat invasive species that were damaging the areas rare endemic flora and fauna. The initial stage involved the cloning of the extinct Giant Moa, a large flightless bird that lived in the area, several hundred years ago. It was thought that they could competitively exclude the local deer, as they are more adapted for New Zealand's flora than their European rivals.

However, the Moa only had limited success, and were clustering in some areas, to the point of overpopulation, and could not effectively graze in areas where other deer were present. To combat this, a group of Haast's Eagles were also cloned. As these are the natural predators of Moa, as well as versatile hunters, it was intended for them to keep both deer and moa populations down. While this strategy did work at first, several people were also attacked and killed by the eagles, and the project was shut down.

However, a few scientists remained, determined to finish their work. They had decided that one of the biggest threats to the natural state of the ecosystem was humans themselves, and aimed to prevent further human interference in the area the only way they knew how, by introducing more predators to hunt them.

However, the Haast's eagle was not well suited to the dense forests, and would not attack humans often when other easier targets were available. More efficient predators were required, and not wanting to introduce further foreign species in, the rogue scientists began to experiment in producing their own genetic experiments out of combinations of the species they had on hand; Giant Moa, Haast's Eagle and Humans.

Several mutants were born out of this, such as the Kohuru Moa, and later on, the Weriweri.