By Sarah Lazarus
Kakapo are avid walkers, wandering on strong legs for miles at a time and hiking up mountains to find mates. They’re keen climbers too, clambering up New Zealand’s 65-foot-high Rimu trees on large claws to forage for red berries on the tips of the conifer’s branches. But there’s one thing that the world’s heaviest parrot species can’t do, and that is to fly. With their bulky frames, males can weigh up to nine pounds and a waddling gait, so have little chance of outrunning predators like stoats and feral cats. When threatened, the nocturnal parrots freeze, relying on their moss-green feathers to act as camouflage.
New Zealand was once a land of flightless birds like the extinct moa with no terrestrial mammalian predators in sight. That changed in the 13th century, when Māori voyagers brought rats and dogs, and again in the 19th century, when European settlers brought rats, cats and mustelids like weasels, stoats and ferrets. These predators have played a major role in putting at risk some 300 native species on New Zealand’s two main islands and smaller offshore islands, taking an especially heavy toll on flightless birds like Kakapo.
Now listed as critically endangered, the Kakapo teetered on the edge of extinction in the mid-1900s due to hunting, predators and land clearance. From the 1970s, conservation efforts focused on managing the remaining Kakapo on the country’s offshore islands, where predators were systematically eradicated. Due to those ongoing efforts, which include breeding programmes, veterinary treatment and supplementary food, Kakapo numbers have grown from fewer than 60 in 1995 to more than 200 today.