Hunt for kakapo to resume

The last hunt for Fiordland's lost kakapo will be launched next month, 20 years after the birds were last known to be alive.

Don Merton, 65, now retired but who played a key role in the rescue of kakapo more than 30 years ago, and Department of Conservation kakapo team leader Paul Jansen, will lead the search from January 17 over some of the most rugged and remote country to find two males, Tawbert and Biscuit.

The birds were not taken out of Fiordland during recovery operations in the 1980s because the old Lands and Survey Department overruled the then Wildlife Service which had wanted to remove them.

"It was a bit of head-butting between Government departments, basically," Mr Jansen said.

The last Fiordland kakapo, Richard Henry, was probably aged around 50 and was still alive so there was no reason to assume the other two had died, he said.

A prolific beech seeding year had injected new hope into finding the birds. An abundance of beech seed, the kakapo's staple diet, is thought to trigger mating behaviour including the male's unusual mating "boom" call which can be heard from 3km away.

"We looked for the birds in 1989 but that was a non-mating year," Mr Jansen said. "Mating vocalisation will give us a huge advantage in trying to find them."

Kakapo were presumed to be extinct until a last-ditch effort in the 1960s and 1970s culminated in the discovery by Mr Merton of a single male in Fiordland in 1975.

By 1977, 15 Fiordland birds had been removed to offshore islands but it was the discovery of 200 birds on Stewart Island that same year that gave kakapo a realistic chance of survival.

Scientists suspect inbreeding is a key factor in low fertility of kakapo and the two Fiordland birds would be a welcome addition to the gene pool.