The wingless bird that ruled the roost.
Before the kiwi became our emblem between the world wars, Aotearoa was known as the land of the moa.
For 50 million years, the large, flightless birds were the dominant land animals of these islands. They were likely docile, their only natural predator the pouākai or Haast’s eagle, and before the arrival of humans, up to 2.5 million moa were traipsing through New Zealand’s bush.
Moa have been extinct for only 500 years, and although the species may seem a distant memory, they are remembered by our whenua. Footprints can be found in riverbeds; skeletons are preserved by swamps, indigenous artworks mark the walls of limestone rock shelters, and native trees have evolved to endure the browsing of one of the largest bird species in the world.
“You can’t help but just imagine being in the bush, hearing foot stomps,” says Quinn Berentson, author of Moa – The Life and Death of New Zealand’s Legendary Bird. “There’s a kind of sadness to that as well – you kind of go, ‘well, I can’t’.”
The recently announced – and somewhat controversial – plans of Colossal Biosciences to genetically “resurrect” the moa within five to eight years has brought the bird back into the forefront of New Zealanders’ minds. Whether or not the project is publicly favoured, it is set to go ahead. So what, and where, were these gentle giants stalking Aotearoa’s forests?
There were nine species of moa – seven of which were found in the South Island, and four in the North. The moa nunui, or giant moa, was the largest – with the South Island species bigger than that found in the North. A female South Island moa nunui could grow taller than three metres, towering over humans, and too large to sit on her own egg.
“They were simply too heavy,” Canterbury Museum natural history curator Dr Paul Scofield tells Frank Film. “She would’ve just crushed it if she’d sat on it, so the boy had to do all the incubation.”
At most, a female moa is estimated to have only produced one or two chicks per year.
“The slow reproduction rate kind of was what doomed them when humans arrived,” says Otago Museum curator Kane Fleury. “They couldn’t replace themselves, and it was just a spiral down to extinction.”
Reverend Wendy Heath (Waitaha/Kāi Tahu) is descended from the Waitaha people of O Wahi Moa, the Valley of the moa in South Canterbury. “We weren’t aware when we initially arrived here that their breeding rate was slow,” she says. “By the time we figured that out, it was a little bit too late. We’d kind of done so much damage to the population, they couldn’t recover.”
Evidence of humans’ effect on the moa population was first found in 1852, on the banks of the Awamoa stream near Oamaru.
“They found a bunch of middens [stone ovens] on the side of this stream, full of moa bones and smashed up moa eggs,” says Berentson. “That answered that question, basically, which was yes, humans and moa lived at the same time.”
Moa were hunted for their meat, their feathers used to weave cloaks, and their bones carved into tools and ornaments. The bird is thought to have been wiped out within 200 years of human settlement in Aotearoa.
When moa bones were sent to London, to be studied by renowned biologist Richard Owen, Berentson says the bird’s extinction became a “worldwide sensation”.
“The whole concept of extinction was kind of new, and people were fascinated by that,” he says.
In 1866, the discovery of hundreds of moa bones preserved in Glenmark swamp put geologist Julius von Haast in possession of the world’s largest collection. Canterbury Museum, established by von Haast the following year, was “built on moa bones”, says Scofield.
“Haast realised that he could turn Canterbury Museum, based on the currency of moa, into one of the great museums of the world,” he says.
“We exchanged our taonga species, our moa, for the taonga of the rest of the world – neolithic artefacts, Egyptian artefacts, art works. I’ve been to most of the significant natural history museums around the world, and every single one of them has moa bones from this site.”
Despite both being flightless birds native to New Zealand, the moa and kiwi are unrelated. Instead, the moa’s closest living relative is the tinamou – a small, flighted bird found in South America, now a target species within moa de-extinction efforts, alongside the emu.
Standing in a limestone cave in South Canterbury, Wendy Heath points out the features of a moa carved into a cave wall: small head, long clawed toes and striations indicating feathers.
“You have to think that the artist who drew these had seen them alive,” she reminds the film crew.
“That’s the amazing thing – it’s not imagination, it’s a documentary.”
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