Fruitful time for 62 struggling kakapo

By PHILIP ENGLISH

The minders of one of the country's rarest birds, the flightless kakapo, are hoping for the best breeding season for years this summer.

This year has been exceptional for rimu trees bearing fruit which the birds eat and the population of kakapo kept on predator-free Codfish Island or Whenua Hou off the west coast of Stewart Island has been boosted to take advantage of the abundance of food.

Some individual birds may still survive in the wild in Fiordland or Stewart Island but only two managed populations totalling 62 birds on 1400ha at Codfish Island and 320ha at Maud Island in the Marlborough Sounds, also predator free, are known to exist.

Numbers slumped to 51 in 1995.

The nocturnal kakapo is the world's most endangered parrot. It is also the world's heaviest parrot and could be the longest-lived of all birds.

Richard Henry, the last surviving kakapo captured as a fully grown adult in Fiordland in 1975, is still alive and well on Maud Island.

The fate of the kakapo at present hangs on 26 of the 62 birds which are female. But 18 of those are elderly and may be too old to breed so hopes rest with the remaining eight "young" females - up to 20 years old.

Kakapo recovery programme scientist Dr Graeme Elliott said that once the bird did not have to worry about predation its longevity was the one thing that could save it from extinction.

"If the kakapo had the longevity of many of the other endangered birds they would be long gone."

In April, after signs of heavy rimu fruiting, the Department of Conservation transferred 11 kakapo from Maud Island to Codfish Island, swelling its population of the birds to 46.

A good rimu fruiting season is known to trigger breeding in kakapo but the rimu forest on Codfish has fruited only three times in the last 10 years.

Following the end of last summer the heavier-than-usual crop of rimu fruit has not decayed as much as in previous years as the little berries and seeds ripen.

The result is more food in the wild for kakapo mothers and their chicks than at any time since the late 1980s.

Rimu fruiting occurs over a two-year period from flowering to the ripening of the red berries when growing chicks require the most food.

Dr Elliott said: "What we have found in the past, irrespective of whether the fruit ripens or not, is the kakapo decide to breed before it ripens.

"In the past the failure of the fruit would have led to the death of all the chicks that had hatched but that won't happen any longer because we have all the female kakapo taking supplementary food that we provide.

"Even if the rimu crop fails we are pretty confident that we will be able to drag all the chicks through," Dr Elliott said.

The future of the parrot depends on the kakapo recovery programme, involving Comalco, the Department of Conservation and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society.

The programme, costing around $900,000 a year, aims to increase the breeding frequency of the existing population and the productivity of nesting attempts as well as to discover why kakapo breed so infrequently - sometimes once every three to five years.

Saving the kakapo means maximising the opportunities that exist for its survival.

Since the late 1980s there have been advances in knowledge about the birds and the use of technology to help improve successful mating and breeding.

Said recovery programme team leader, Paul Jansen: "We know they need to be of a certain weight to make breeding more likely but they should not be too heavy otherwise the kakapo will produce more male chicks.

"Given that one male can impregnate several females it is more important that we boost our female kakapo population."

Mating begins in January and the chicks hatch from late February to early April.

The kakapo has recently featured on the cover of a World Conservation Union and World Parrot Trust publication setting out an action plan to counter the main threats against parrots - habitat loss and illegal trading.

Kakapo Recovery

World Parrot Trust