Do not disturb: kakapo nesting here

ANNE BESTON reports from the front lines, where one of the world's rarest parrots is staging a comeback.

In the pitch-black hollow of a tree trunk, something moves. In the camera's flashlight two staring eyes and a long beak in a whiskered face reveal the displeasure of a kakapo called Flossie. She sits up indignantly, peering at the camera poked cautiously into the nest entrance.

A television crew has already paid Flossie a visit and by the time the second flash goes off she has had enough.

Her harsh "skark" cry is the signal to beat a hasty retreat and Kakapo Recovery Programme leader Paul Jansen just stops himself from grabbing me by the parka and hauling me away. It's been an hour's walk to Flossie's nest, most of the terrain an easy climb along specially laid boardwalks through the damp bush of Codfish Island-Whenua Hou.

It's media day today and the weather is not co-operating. Winds buffet the tiny single-engined Cessna across Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island and the helicopter ride is hair-raising.

But after a decade of hope followed by despair, the Department of Conservation is keen to let New Zealanders know their tax dollars, which along with Comalco's contribution pay for the kakapo programme, have been well spent. The total is about $800,000 a year, and Comalco has pitched in about $2 million over the past decade.

With 22 chicks hatched and more to come, it's time to show off.

"You won't hear birdsong like this during the day on many islands," Mr Jansen says, striding along in thick boots and shiveringly short shorts as kaka, tui and bellbird call overhead.

Flossie is raising her chicks as a solo mum, foraging at night for food and feeding the chicks during the day.

About 5m from her nest is a small tent with two air mattresses and a raft of technological equipment.

At night two human minders occupy the tent. When she leaves the nest, an alarm sounds and a blue "heat pad" is hooked on to a long pole and poked into the nest over the chicks.

When the transmitter on Flossie's back signals she is about to return, the heat pad is whisked away. The process is repeated as she leaves and returns throughout the night.

It is obvious that Mr Jansen, who keeps up a running commentary during a two-hour tramp, loves this place. Windswept, remote, often wet and cold, life for DoC staff and volunteers summering here is basic.

They crowd into a small hut on the western shore of the island, socks drying near the stove and the smell of breakfast cooking in the air. Volunteers range from a grey-haired woman washing a mountain of dishes in dirt-brown water to young men with dreadlocks munching on muesli bars.

Most of the island's inhabitants, permanent and temporary, say the same thing: it's a privilege to work here, to spend long, cold nights in a tiny tent staring for hours at a video screen of a nesting female kakapo.

Mr Jansen says the theory is that the birds go on a "food tour", roaming through the forest in October to check out the availability of rimu fruit before deciding whether to breed.

This year they must have liked what they saw. By mid-February, 18 females were sitting on 53 eggs and the baby boom started.

DoC now has the happy problem of finding homes for the birds, but one place it won't be looking is the mainland. Most New Zealanders will probably never meet a kakapo, yet the amount of human effort spent managing the species on Codfish Island makes this one of the most world's most intensive conservation efforts.

Kakapo can't live with us but it seems they now can't live without us.

nzherald.co.nz/environment