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The Kakapo Recovery Programme with the New Zealand Department of Conservation is an incredible team that has made it their mission to help protect the Kakapo, a critically endangered species. This past week I had the privilege to talk with Bronnie, a Ranger from this very team who shed some light on why this species is important for us to protect and a little insight on their unique and humorous personalities. I hope you enjoy this Q&A and make sure to check out the links at the bottom to see how you can help support them!
A: Kākāpō are unique in a lot of ways: they’re nocturnal (one of only two parrot species that are), they’re the only flightless parrot and they’re also the heaviest parrot. They use an unusual mating system called lek mating, where the males gather and display and the females then choose who they want to mate with, often mating multiple times with the same or different males. The males have nothing to do with rearing the chicks. Kākāpō also breeds irregularly, with breeding triggered by the masting (mass fruiting) of the rimu tree. In areas, without rimu, we don’t yet understand what would have triggered them to breed.
And then there’s plenty of weird things about their physiology as well, and I’m sure the genetics work that’s currently being done will bring up even more weird things! They’re evolutionarily very distinct from any other species so they have lots of weird quirks!
Photo Credit: Lydia Uddstrom
A: The smell is something that surprises most people! You don’t expect them to smell amazingly. It’s hard to describe, sort of earthy, musty, and slightly sweet. It’s definitely unique and sometimes you can smell a bird before you can see them! We don’t understand why they smell like they do either. Prior to humans introducing mammalian predators to New Zealand, there was no reason for them not to have a strong scent, but for mammalian predators who hunt via scent rather than sight, it’s like a giant flashing arrow pointed at the birds and their nests and roosts.
A: Working with such intelligent birds there are always good stories! And each kākāpō has such a unique personality. Galaxy at the moment is being a pain, stealing food from Xena’s hopper (Xena has recently returned from hospital following major surgery and rehab after a nasty accident as a chick and is getting sup food to support her transition back to the wild), despite having been set up with her own hopper to try and get her out of Xena’s!
Hakatere once gave me a real fright by turning up on my feet while I was on the loo! In 2016 Bluster-Murphy was on a few rangers’ blacklists as he was going through a real teenage stage and decided the best thing to do in response to the adult males booming and trying to attract the females was to set himself up outside one of the tents and scream at the top his lungs all night.
Kākāpō are very smart and curious. They’re very good at getting into things they shouldn’t and can be quite playful, especially as chicks. Soccer with a pinecone was a favorite game with the chicks who were treated for aspergillosis at Auckland Zoo last year.
Photo Credit: Lydia Uddstrom
A: Personally I was introduced to kākāpō via the BBC doco “Last Chance to See”. They went on to become one of my favourite animals and then literally cried when an opportunity to work with the team came up. Collectively everyone on the team is passionate about wildlife and conservation. We’re here to make a difference to a species and love the experience.
Day to day looks very different depending on what role you have on the team. In total, our team is currently 16 people. Six of them are the field rangers, the ones who work directly on the islands with the kākāpō. They work four weeks on, two weeks off rotating roster so we continuously have staff out on the island. The work the rangers do varies with the season, and is very different inbreeding years vs non-breeding years! At the moment they’re working to catch every one of the 210 kākāpō in the population and give them an annual health check and change their transmitter (a little backpack style piece of tech that allows us to track and locate each individual kākāpō, and also collects activity data). Some of the birds are also due for vaccines, and the rangers are collecting roost samples from some of the birds as well for some current research. Some of them have also been busy installing a new system of remote data loggers that will improve our ability to monitor the population remotely rather than having to walk around the island to collect signals and record how birds are moving around.
The rest of us are mostly officed based, and each has a specialized role. For instance, our scientific advisor does a lot of data analysis, collaboration with researchers and organizes what samples and data needs to be collected on the islands. Our infrastructure ranger is working on tasks like a new boardwalk, improving the power systems on the islands, working towards 100% renewable power for our work, and also buying new gear. We all spend time on the islands though, especially during breeding seasons when there is lots to do out there!
A: Habitat loss and hunting both caused population decline and localized extinctions, but the nail in the coffin for kākāpō was the introduction of mammalian predators. The Māori bought dogs and kiore (Polynesian rat), and then Europeans bought cats and more rats, mive, possums, and then introduced mustelids (stoats, ferrets, and weasels) to attempt to control things like rabbits…
The kākāpō’s natural predators would have been things like the Haast eagle and other birds of prey, which hunt by sight. So kākāpō became nocturnal and developed amazing camouflage. They freeze if frightened and become almost impossible to see in the bush. Weka would have also taken their eggs and small chicks, but they’d only be able to do so when mum was off the nest and they generally don’t leave eggs or little chicks for long.
But mammals hunt via smell. So this giant bird with a strong scent that freezes when frightened became a very easy target for cats, dogs, and stoats. Rats, mice, and possums would all go for their eggs and chicks.
All kākāpō now live of predator-free offshore islands, and the Haast eagle is extinct, so we’ve basically eliminated predation as an issue. But as the population grows we need new sites for the kākāpō to live in and trying to find safe places with podocarp forest with rimu (which is very slow growing) is hard to do. We’re also yet to invent a fence that kākāpō can’t climb so fenced sanctuaries aren’t really an option yet either.
Photo Credit: Jake Osborne
A: In their own right, kākāpō are beautiful, clever, and unique. They’re unlike anything else alive, and their story is told again and again across New Zealand as our native species lost out to habitat loss and introduced predators. The spaces that kākāpō need to thrive provides habitat for a huge number of other species. The islands heave with wildlife and plants you simply don’t see anymore on the mainland and the birdsong is deafening. Because of how disrupted the ecosystem is, we don’t really know how kākāpō interact with other species but there has been one paper that indicates that they were probably a key pollinator of a plant that’s now critically endangered.
Things people can do to help include sharing the kākāpō story, planting native trees, trapping invasive species (this is especially the case here in NZ), donating to the programme and volunteering with us during breeding seasons. Picking up rubbish and reducing your carbon footprint are things anyone anywhere in the world can do that will help. We are worried that global warming might impact the fruiting cycles of rimu and hence kākāpō breeding.
Learn MORE about this species by checking out my post ‘About the Kakapo’.
Make sure to follow the New Zealand Department of Conservation – Kakapo Recovery (Facebook and Instagram) to get updates on their work!
Snag your very own Kakapo print! 50% will go directly to the organization Bronnie works with (New Zealand Department of Conservation – Kakapo Recovery) to help Kakapo and other local wildlife!
If you’ve never heard of a Kakapo or learned something new from this Q&A with Bronnie, comment below! I’d love to hear from you!
Photo Credit: Department of Conservation – Kakapo Recovery
You are the best! Thank you so much for sharing! ❤️