How New Zealand’s kakapo was brought back from the brink

By 1995, there were only 51 left in the wild. There are now just over 200 (and each has a name). The story of the kakapo is the story of just how successfully a bird species, even one with distinctly peculiar habits, can be protected in the wild.

The kakapo, covered in bright green down, had no natural predators. All it had to do was stand still in foliage and it all but disappeared. With the arrival of human settlers and their domesticated animals, new threats and new avian diseases began to take their toll. The kakapo was hunted extensively too.

As things grew desperate for this species in the ’80s and ’90s, all remaining kakapos were transferred to three tiny, uninhabited islands that had been cleared of predators, in an effort that was and continues to be led by the Department of Conservation of the government of New Zealand.

Each kakapo has since been fitted with an activity tracker that helps track mating habits and success rates. The Kakapo recovery programme has used deception with great success too. Kakapos only breed once every two to four years. And females may or may not lay one egg, which may or may not be fertile. To ensure that at least the fertilised eggs made it to hatchlings, conservationists began to collect them for artificial incubation, and replacing the egg with a fake one so as not to upset the mother. Once the chick had hatched, it was returned to the nest, and the fake egg retrieved.

This, combined with artificial insemination and supplementary feeding, has seen the population grow every other year. In 2016, 37 chicks crossed over into adulthood. In 2019, 49 of 50 breeding females laid eggs and 76 eggs hatched.

The programme hopes to someday reintroduce kakapos to the mainland. But first, the population must cross 500 individuals. They’re still not halfway there yet.