Kākāpō have returned to the North Island for the first time in more than 60 years. The four Kākāpō, named Bunker, Māhutonga, Ōtepoti and Motupōhue, have been rehomed from remote Fiordland to Waikato. Photo / Jake Osborne
Kākāpō have returned to the North Island for the first time in more than 60 years. The four Kākāpō, named Bunker, Māhutonga, Ōtepoti and Motupōhue, have been rehomed from remote Fiordland to Waikato. Photo / Jake Osborne
Four of the world’s rarest flightless parrots have been relocated to New Zealand’s North Island as the Kākāpō breeding programme expands from Whenua Hou/Codfish Island.
Bunker, Māhutonga, Ōtepoti and Motupōhue arrived in their new habitat at the Maungatautari Ecological Island in Waikato shortly after 3pm yesterday, after making the 1000-kilometre journey from remote Fiordland.
The translocation was made by the Department of Conservation (DoC) in partnership with Ngāi Tahu and Air New Zealand.
Deidre Vercoe, DoC’s manager for kākāpō, said that the move was a historic moment for New Zealand’s natural taonga.
“Until now, kākāpō have been contained to a few predator-free offshore islands, so to have them now returning to the mainland is a major achievement for all involved,” Vercoe said.
The birds were last seen in the North Island in the mid 1960s and completely vanished from mainland New Zealand by the 1980s.
Sanctuary Mountain home of Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust.
After being eradicated from the mainland by predators, kākāpō were brought near extinction, with numbers plummeting to just 51 of the rare birds in 1995s.
With numbers rebounding to over 250 last year, the breeding programme run by DoC and Ngāi Tahu is running out of space on Codfish Island and looking for suitable habitats elsewhere in New Zealand.
Their new home at the Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari was selected for its old-growth rimu forest, which is an important food source for the birds, and is around twice the size of their old home on Whenua Hou.
Although surrounded by a 47km predator fence, the birds are technically living wild in the sanctuary.
Dr Janelle Ward, the sanctuary’s biodiversity team leader, said it was the product of “decades of collaboration” to find out where the birds could thrive.
“It’s a historic day,” said Tali Jellyman, experience manager for the sanctuary.
“We’ve one volunteer who saw the last kākāpō at Mt Bruce in the 1970s, they didn’t think they’d live to see them return to the North Island,” Jellyman said.
The new residents were greeted at a pōwhiri and celebration at the Pōhara Marae, and released into the 4300 hectare mountain.
Co-chair of the Ngāti Koroki Kahukura Trust, Rahui Papa, said it was “a privilege to be entrusted with taonga from Te Waipounamu”.
The four kākāpō moved are all males and there is no breeding programme at Maungatautari, but there will be valuable lessons for how the birds take to a new habitat from the offshore islands kākāpō can live in, giving hope for more translocations.
The sanctuary is open to the public, with the 7.3km Wairere Traverse being a popular walk over the mountain. However it is stressed that the birds are wild in the park and not on public display.
As one of the largest fenced, invasive-predator-free enclosures in the world, Vercoe says they will be very hard to spot, but lucky visitors might hear them.
“The potential to hear their distinctive ‘booming’ calls across the Waikato landscape for the first time in generations is an important milestone,” she said.
