West Coast Wildlife Centre, kiwi breeding facility at Franz Josef, New Zealand

The West Coast Wildlife Centre occupies the former Hukawai Glacier Centre, a converted indoor ice-climbing building in Franz Josef / Waiau. Inside are incubators kept at 35.5 °C, an egg-processing room, brood boxes for kiwi chicks, a tuatara enclosure opened in 2017, and displays on glaciers and West Coast history.

The facility opened in 2010 and uses a converted building that originally served as an ice climbing centre. Since its founding, the centre has bred more than half of all Rowi kiwis in the world and has run Operation Nest Egg, a program that has rescued endangered kiwi chicks since 1995.

The centre's kiwi programme is a partnership with the Department of Conservation and Te Rūnunga o Makaawhio of Ngāi Tahu, who retrieve rowi and Haast tokoeka eggs from the wild. One female tuatara, chosen through a public competition, was named Dorothy after Franz-Josef-born historian Dorothy Fletcher. The building also holds interpretative displays on glaciers and West Coast history, a remnant of its earlier life as the Hukawai Glacier Centre.

The centre occupies the former Hukawai Glacier Centre building in Franz Josef / Waiau, a town that mainly serves visitors to the nearby Franz Josef Glacier. Tours of the rearing facility run alongside the tuatara enclosure and interpretative displays on kiwi, glaciers and West Coast history. The hatching season runs from late August to March, when eggs are retrieved from wild nests.

The centre's first chick, a rowi named Wawe, hatched on 26 November 2010. Eggs arrive at about 45 days old and are turned four times a day in 35.5 °C incubators to imitate a male rowi's incubation. Hatching takes around six days.