“. . . the loss of the kakapo would be of incomparable proportions, as the species has no parallel, no functional or taxonomic equivalent, anywhere else in the world.”

—J. M. Diamond, evolutionary biologist and Pulitzer Prize winner, quoted in 1990

I had not heard of the kakapo until I went to New Zealand for the first time and met Don Merton. The name comes from the native Maori language, meaning “night parrot.” And when Don told me about this flightless, giant, nocturnal green bird, and the ongoing efforts to ensure its future, I was entranced.

The kakapo was common and widespread in New Zealand until Polynesian settlers arrived 850 years ago. They set fire to large areas of the country, caught and ate birds, and brought with them their dogs and the Polynesian rat. It is thought that between their arrival and that of the Europeans, about forty-five types of birds—including the giant flightless moa—became extinct. The kakapo suffered huge reductions in numbers and range, yet somehow managed to survive. The European settlers, however, continued to devastate the country, clearing land and bringing their own alien species.

By 1888 the kakapo, along with that other unique, flightless bird, the kiwi, was in steep decline. During this time a New Zealand conservationist, Richard Henry, helped convince the government to set aside three offshore islands to which these endangered birds could be transferred. About 475 kakapos and kiwis were then captured and released into their new island homes where, it was hoped, they would flourish without interference from introduced mammalian predators. But Richard Henry, who had moved along with the birds to one of the three islands, found that it was too close to the mainland. It wasn’t long before stoats managed to swim across. Once again subjected to predation, the flightless birds disappeared from the island, and the whole costly exercise was deemed a failure.

By the early 1900s, the kakapo was thought to be extinct, although there had been a sighting of one on Stewart Island in 1949. Then in 1958, a live kakapo was found (by a Wildlife Service expedition’s dog) in Fiordland—the remote southwest region of the mainland. It was caught, photographed, and released. Now, with real proof of its continued survival, biologists urged that all remaining kakapos be caught for captive breeding. Permission was granted, and a facility was prepared the southeast region of New Zealand at Mount Bruce. This was followed by years of often frustrating efforts to save the kakapo.

In 1960, the first team—which included Don Merton (then a young wildlife officer)—set off into the steep and treacherous terrain of Fiordland on the first of many searches in this region. I have read descriptions of the challenging conditions: the steep, craggy slopes, the howling winds, the avalanches that are common during the torrential rainstorms. Team members had to carry all their equipment up into this inhospitable habitat, then set up their little tents on any small flat spots they could find on the steep slopes.

Five kakapos were successfully captured on this expedition—but they were all male. They were sent on a long and stressful journey to the breeding station. Only one of them survived for more than three months and he, despite improved conditions, fell sick and died four and a half years after being taken from the wild.

The Last Mainland Kakapos
In 1974, Don was appointed leader of the Wildlife Service’s kakapo rescue program with permission to move any remaining kakapos from Fiordland to Maud Island, an offshore, predator-free island. The expedition that set off was very different from that of 1960. First, helicopters were now available, so that the team didn’t need to waste so much time and effort climbing with all their gear and supplies to reach suitable search places—although the treacherous weather and rugged mountains made it risky work for the pilots. Second, the biologists had permission for three dogs to join them, specially trained to track kakapos. Third, they had the advantage of previous experience and knew a great deal more about the kakapo, its behavior, and its terrain. And Don, biologists Rod Morris, Ron Nilsson, and others made a good team, constantly bouncing ideas off one another.

It took them two weeks to before they caught their first kakapo, an old bedraggled male, and had him safely in a specially constructed holding pen. He was named Jonathan Livingstone Kakapo, Jonathan for short. A few days later they captured Jill, a smaller bird they believed to be a female. It would be three years before they discovered that Jill was, in fact, a male! Jonathan and Jill were soon safely delivered to Maud Island.

The next season in Fiordland was even more successful. This time there were helicopters based close by (on other work) and available much more frequently and at short notice. Thus the team could get to places impossible to reach before, could search in more areas, and could concentrate on their work with less need to attend to their own survival. Their goal was to capture additional kakapos for translocation to Maud Island and to learn as much as possible about kakapo behavior.

Kakapos have a “lekking” system, though it works differently from that of better-known prairie chicken. During the breeding season, kakapo males gather at specially prepared sites or “courts”—each male constructs several “bowls” (round and about three inches deep), which are approached along well-defined and maintained “trails.” Then, establishing himself in one of his bowls, he utters his distinctive booming mating call that will attract females (if there are any). The team found evidence that one male had recently attended to his court, scratching out three bowls. And he was booming. Soon they heard two kakapos booming farther away. That night, with the aid of a (newly developed) light-intensifier scope, Don was able to watch for the first time ever a male booming in his bowl no more than two yards away from him.

The male kakapos became increasingly tolerant of their human observers. One of them left his bowl to explore the equipment stored underneath one of the hides, tearing at everything stored there to the consternation of the would-be observer—who found himself recording only the sounds of expensive destruction! On another occasion the kakapo, seemingly more interested in the humans than in his booming, tried to tear his way into the hide where Rod was crouched. And when Rod finally moved outside, he was treated to a courtship display: The kakapo slowly waved his wings with movements similar to those of a basking butterfly, while swaying from foot to foot and clicking his beak. Next he backed toward Rod, almost touching his boots with splayed tail, then turned and climbed up his trousers and onto his back where he perched, gently nibbling his hair!

For the next few nights, this extraordinary performance was repeated with other members of the team. The frustrated creature would pull at roots, break off twigs, and carry beakfuls of lichen. He actually tried to copulate with each of his four human observers, climbing onto their shoulders, lowering his wings on either side of their heads, and pressing his tail down while moving rhythmically from side to side and panting. He even attempted to copulate with a balled sweater that Don placed in his bowl! It seemed that having prepared his bowls and boomed night after night in the expectation of attracting females, he was so turned on that almost anything served as a sex object so long as it was in the vicinity of his bowl.

Throughout that season, the weather was mostly terrible. Once, after exceptionally heavy rain, the river rose suddenly and one of the team was trapped for two days and nights in a three-foot-square hide only four feet tall. And on another occasion, two of them had to spend four and a half days on a ledge less than fifty yards wide with water rushing over the floor of the tent. Don described the noise of the rain hammering on their tents, the roar of waterfalls, the wild flapping of canvas. And when the sun finally shone, it brought swarms of biting sandflies that made life almost more unbearable.

Before the end of the season, a kakapo from a different location was discovered by their specially trained search dog Mandy and captured by Don. He was named Richard Henry and became the first TV personality of the program. The three booming males were not captured; it was hoped that they might yet attract any remaining females (although later it became clear that none were left in Fiordland). Richard Henry was sent to join Jill and Jonathan on Maud Island, where they eventually divided up the suitable forested areas amongst them—and waited for females.

During the next two years, researchers continued to search for females in Fiordland to no avail. In 1977, Don organized eight two-man teams to conduct extensive searches in Fiordland, determined to find a female if there was one—but they did not even hear booming or find signs of male activity. Four years later, Don decided to try one last time—and amazingly, on the very last evening, two males were captured, in two different areas. Mirkwood was caught by Rhys Buckingham, who climbed up to grab him from a tree—getting his finger badly bitten. Hugo was caught by Don, also by hand. Those were the last kakapos to be moved from the remnant, all-male Fiordland population. Don wanted to catch the last six males that they knew were still alive and send them to Maud, but permission was refused. And so they were abandoned to their fate.

“Booming” on Stewart Island
In 1977, when the situation on the mainland was so bleak, Don had sent four two-man teams, under the leadership of Ron and Rod, to Stewart Island where there had been reports of kakapo sightings. Each team found signs of kakapo presence and heard booming within hours of their arrival on the island! The excitement mounted when they found no less than fourteen males gathered, booming from their closely spaced bowls on a ridge. Don lost no time in coming to see for himself. Altogether it was estimated that there were perhaps two hundred birds on Stewart Island, but the team had little luck in trapping them for sexing and marking. In more than three hundred trap-nights, just two males were captured.

The turning point in the long struggle to save kakapo came in 1980 when the team finally received permission to use dogs on Stewart Island, and two Labradors (one of them Mandy) and a spaniel joined the team. The biologists by now all felt sure that females would be found—and they were. In four weeks, despite terrible weather, the dogs found ten kakapos, all of whom were caught, examined, and released. And two of them were females.

For the first time since Don joined the effort he knew that, with the existence of females confirmed, there was at last a real possibility that the species could be saved. He described the moment when he identified the first female as “like touching eternity.” And how thrilling when the biologists found two nests, the first with two tiny chicks, the second with one. Sadly, one of the chicks from the first nest was killed, probably by rats, but the other, named Snark, fledged successfully (and was eventually transferred to a safe island).

Because the biologists were able to catch and mark individual kakapos, it soon became clear that the Stewart Island population was in serious decline, and that this was mainly due to predation. During 1982, more than 50 percent of marked adults had been found dead—killed by cats. Don and his colleagues sought permission to relocate the constantly dwindling kakapo population to a safer habitat—a process that involved months of frustration until the last of the opposition was finally overcome. Don assumed responsibility for planning and leading the capture and relocation of the sixty-one remaining kakapos in southern Stewart Island. Two offshore islands, Little Barrier and Codfish, were cleared of introduced predators, and along with Maud were chosen as safe refuges.

Island-Hopping Refugees
The first kakapos to arrive on Maud had been, of course, Jonathan, Jill, and Richard Henry. They were joined by Mirkwood and Hugo, both of whom had died shortly thereafter. The next casualty was Jill, killed—of all the ghastly accidents—by the dog of a Wildlife Service trainee. It was only then that they discovered “she” was in fact a male, so that the death was not such a blow to the program as it might have been.

After Jill’s death, Jonathan disappeared and was never found again. Richard Henry was the only kakapo left on Maud until, two years later, he was joined by a male and three females from Stewart Island. Soon both males were heard booming. It was at this point, when things seemed to be going so well, that a stoat was discovered on the supposedly predator-free island. It is now known that stoats can swim up to a thousand yards, and quite regularly travel to islands eight hundred yards from the mainland. That stoat was eventually trapped—along with seven others—and a permanent ring of traps was set around the island’s coast and that of the adjacent mainland. But until all this was completed, Maud was not safe enough for the precious kakapos. Once again, they had to be relocated.

Hopeful Beginnings on Little Barrier Island
They went to the seventy-five-hundred-acre Little Barrier Island—from which, in an epic, extraordinarily effective campaign, all feral cats had been eradicated. By the time Richard Henry and the other kakapos arrived from Maud, eighteen individuals—seven of them females—from Stewart Island were already in residence. All the birds did well in their new home (Richard Henry’s third!), and over the next few years some booming was heard and crude tracks and bowls were developed along the island’s summit ridge. Then, in 1986, serious and continuous booming from eight of the males was recorded. Their lek system was up and running!

But although successful breeding occurred in 1991 (two chicks raised), reproduction on Little Barrier was poor. Furthermore, the island was considered too rugged and too large for intensive management purposes, so all the kakapos there were moved to Codfish Island and (the now stoat-free) Maud Island in the late 1990s.

Don recently wrote to update me on the situation. It looks good, he said, with kakapos well established on both of these predator-free islands—but it’s not possible to relax. Monitoring has to be maintained, and the population must be managed. This involves moving adult birds between islands to capitalize on periodic mass fruiting, which is known to stimulate breeding behavior, and to give a chance for genetically under-represented males to breed.

Richard Henry: The Importance of an Individual
Richard Henry, being the only surviving kakapo from mainland New Zealand, is genetically distinct from Stewart Island birds (which show disturbingly little genetic variability). Don had long emphasized the extreme importance of Richard Henry’s potential contribution to the gene pool, and urged that he be returned to Maud. On the smaller island he could be more effectively managed, and competition from the few males was likely to be less intense. Thus in 1996 he made his third journey—from Little Barrier back to Maud Island—along with a female named Flossie. Miraculously, in 1998, just eighteen months after his return to Maud, Richard Henry mated with Flossie, producing three chicks—one female and two males—bearing precious Fiordland genes. Now ten years old, Richard Henry’s offspring are sexually mature and should breed for the first time when mass fruiting next occurs. However, in 2002, against Don’s advice, Richard Henry was moved from Maud and returned to Codfish Island, where he has shown no inclination to join in any lekking or breeding activity.

In the hope of finding another kakapo with the genetic strength of Richard Henry, Don led a monthlong expedition to search the former kakapo haunts in Fiordland in early 2006. Sadly, no kakapos and no signs less than about twenty years old were found. This result confirmed what Don had believed—that the last of the Fiordland kakapos died in or soon after the 1980s.

Nevertheless the kakapo population is gradually increasing. It has required Herculean efforts on the part of a great many people, and the species would have become extinct but for innovative management strategies, many of which were devised and implemented by Don Merton. Under the auspices of the Kakapo Management Programme, a dedicated team monitors the birds and maintains predator-free habitats, researches supplementary foods that might trigger breeding activity more frequently, and moves birds from place to place as part of an overall plan for their long-term survival. Don, whose dedication and determination averted the extinction of the last remaining kakapo in the 1970s and early 1980s, has played a leading role in kakapo conservation for the past thirty-four years.

In early 2008, he sent me a hopeful update: The global kakapo population on the two offshore islands of Codfish and Maud was eighty-six individuals, forty-one females and forty-five males. Forty-five of the birds came originally from Stewart Island, and forty are their offspring. The eighty-sixth individual is, of course, Richard Henry—the last known survivor from mainland New Zealand.