Conservation biologist Andrew Digby has just returned from the motu of Whenua Hou (Codfish Island), where 75 kākāpō reside.
With the breeding season almost here, Digby tells Jesse Mulligan about how the critically endangered species is faring among efforts to revive it.
Photo: Department of Conservation / Andrew Digby
Digby says kākāpō is the type of bird that gets attention from all around the world.
"We were checking up on a few birds, we had a few in hospital recently so [we were] keeping an eye on those and doing a few health checks as well ... ahead of the breeding season, which will kick off in earnest in the next few weeks.
"The birds are all looking in reasonable condition. We start to feed them next month. So we start to get them ready in optimal breeding condition and ready for the start of next year."
But they're careful not to make the females too heavy because that tends to produce more male chicks, which is not what the conservationists want, he says.
"The females go on a bit of a diet. We try to keep them on a weight range of about 1.5 to 2 kilos.
"[For] the males, we let them eat as much as possible. They lose a lot of weight over the breeding season ... so we fed them up as much as we can within reason."
Breeding season is a big deal because it doesn't happen every year, he says.
"They only happen about every two to four years.
"The last time we had one was in 2019 ... it was the biggest one we've ever had, and we fledged about 74 chicks in that.
"Every time there's a kakapo nest, it kind of gets our full attention and so we make sure we have all the monitoring systems in place, we have people on standby to intervene if anything goes wrong."
This year, they're relying more on technology to monitor the birds to precede the long-term strategy to be more hands-off, he says.
"As we go forward in time, we need to be a little less intensive with kākāpō.
"Kākāpō are probably one of the most intensely managed species in the world and we can't do that forever, we need to get smarter and little more hands off."
There's also a new breeding island for kākāpō this year, Te Kakahu (Chalky Island), he says.
"We're treating that as more of a hands-off island, little bit lighter management touch than we've had in the past than our other islands.
"There's a danger to that, there's a likelihood that we will lose more chicks. But in the long term, in the big picture, that's what we have to do.
"We don't like managing kākāpō so intensively, it's not a natural state. They need it because they're on the verge of extinction, but over time as the population grows, we need to step back more."
Last season, there were 252 kākāpō eggs, 86 of which hatched, and 74 survived to become fledglings, bringing the population to a high of 213 towards the end of 2020. But that number is now down to 201, Digby says.
"We normally lose few juveniles over the first few years of their life but we're kind of hoping it won't dip below 200 before we start going up again around January, February of next year."
Stoats and cats are known predators of the bird and rats may also pose a threat to chicks and eggs, he says.
But a couple of kākāpō have actually been lost to accidents, he says.
"One bird got impaled on a branch as it fell and another one got stuck... we keep a close on them in the first few months after leaving the nest, but some of these happened a little later than that, so [they can die] from natural causes."
The next team effort for conservation of kākāpō is looking at where to put them all, Digby says.
"It also ties into the predator-free New Zealand work that's going on, trying to find sites where we can actually put kākāpō where they can be safe."
People can follow along with the latest on kākāpō through Andrew Digby's social media.
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