Kakapo!

Buller Kakapo

New Zealand is home to an astonishing variety of odd and interesting animal species. One of the oddest, and most rare, is the kakapo. With a reputation for being charming, intelligent, amiable, and willing to clown, kakapos are hard not to like, and before they became so desperately endangered, they apparently were popular pets in New Zealand homes.

Although the kakapo is technically a parrot and resembles a parrot, it's not actually very closely related to what we think of as parrots. It's a heavy bird, flightless, and nocturnal. The only known native kakapo predator has been extinct for several hundred years, the giant Haast's eagle.

Kakapos are also called night parrots or owl-parrots. They're long-lived, with a life span of over 60 years. Even in the wild, this bird has a reputation for being gentle, passive, and unafraid of human or predator, alike. This lack of self-preservation brought the species to a point of teetering on the brink of extinction during the 20th century, because even in the most remote locations the introduced stoat—a sort of weasel, originally imported from Britain— cheerfully wiped out kakapo eggs and chicks. Kakapo are excellent climbers, known to roost in trees—an ability that would protect them from most ground-dwelling mammals—but stoats and humans both were undeterred by the tree-climbing characteristic, especially in the face of the kakapo's natural docility and lack of fear.

The kakapo is a talented climber

Kakapos are very slow breeders, and by 1949 it was clear that the kakapo was on the verge of extinction. The New Zealand Wildlife Service conducted searches of various regions to attempt to recover some of these very rare birds. Unfortunately, so little was known of their habits that often the collected specimens (only six individuals in the decade of the 1960s) died after transfer to the Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre.

Things were looking very bad indeed for the kakapo. All the remaining specimens found were males and no female had been seen in over 70 years. Then almost miraculously, in 1980, a female was identified on Stewart Island. Shortly thereafter, a previously undiscovered population of nearly 200 kakapo were found. Then feral domestic cats killed and ate over half of the Stewart Island kakapos in the years immediately thereafter. The remaining kakapo were eventually evacuated to sanctuaries kept meticulously free of any introduced species. In 2001, there were only 61 kakapo known to be alive.

A rare look at a rare birdBy 2008, the population had been nursed back to 91 of the unusual birds, and biologists, scientists, and conservationists apparently vie for the limited number of volunteer rotation positions to help watch over the nests. The breeding season for kakapo only occurs every 3 to 5 years in the wild, apparently when there's an especially abundant food supply. Their mating rituals are quite complex, as well, and if the species is to be saved, scientists say we'll need to have a much more complete understanding of their lekking rituals.

In 2008, the The NZ Department of Conservation brought six kakapo to the Invercargill Workingmen’s Club to provide a rare opportunity for members of the public to see these birds, and reportedly over 3000 people showed up and stood in line to do just that.