New Zealand Takahe bird returns home after disappearing for 100 years
4 Min Read
The Takahe evolved without native land mammals around them and adapted. They are flightless birds that stand at around 50cm tall and live in the mountains. According to fossil remains, their origin goes back to at least the prehistoric Pleistocene era.
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An undated photo of the Takahe bird in the Auckland Zoo in New Zealand. (Auckland Zoo)
87-year-old Tā Tipene O’Regan opened a large wooden box in New Zealand’s South Island and out came a heavy bright turquoise bird, running for life.
"I am now largely blind, but I still saw them," O'Regan said, recognizing the Takahe - a large, flightless bird, believed to be extinct for decades, as 18 of them were released in the Lake Whakatipu Waimāori valley last week where they had not been seen for around 100 years.
The Ngāi Tahu tribe, native to the land and to whom it belongs, regarded the bird's return as significant.
A model of planet Earth
The Takahe evolved without native land mammals around them and adapted. They are flightless birds that stand at around 50cm tall and live in the mountains. According to fossil remains, their origin goes back to at least the prehistoric Pleistocene era.
Tūmai Cassidy, of the Ngāi Tahu people, said: "They’re almost prehistoric looking... Very broad and bold." Their bodies look perfectly spherical in blue and green, making them seem like a model of planet Earth on two long, bright red legs.
O’Regan, a Ngāi Tahu rangatira (elder), stated: "Someone once called us, the land of the birds that walk," expressing: "There are few things more beautiful than to watch these large birds galloping back into tussock lands where they haven’t walked for over a century."
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The birds were formally declared extinct in 1898, and their population was heavily affected by European settlers’ animal companions: stoats, cats, ferrets, and rats. After being rediscovered in 1948, their numbers reached the current amount of 500, growing around 8% a year.
Previously, conservationists gathered and artificially incubated the eggs to prevent them from becoming predator food. The chicks were fed and raised by workers wearing sock puppets with the birds’ red beaks, and after being switched to breeding in captivity, the Department of Conservation (DOC) began to slowly introduce them to some island sanctuaries and national parks, investing in pest-elimination to try to protect them.
New Zealand is currently partaking in a national effort to remove some of its worst introduced predators – rats, possums, and stoats – by 2050.
DOC Takahē recovery operations manager Deidre Vercoe clarified: "Trapping of stoats, ferrets and feral cats has knocked down predator numbers... Continuing to keep them low … is crucial."
If the newly released birds begin to adapt, there is hope that another seven birds will be released in October and up to 10 young takahē early next year.
"After decades of hard work to increase the takahē population, it’s rewarding to now be focusing on establishing more wild populations, but it comes with challenges – establishing new wild native species populations can take time and success is not guaranteed," she noted.
'The Land of Tears'
This release on Ngāi Tahu land is considered an effort to establish the country’s third wild takahē population in collaboration between the government and the Indigenous Ngāi Tahu tribe, which will become home to them. Ngāi Tahu ancestors used to gather their feathers and weave them into cloaks.
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As for the Māori Indigenous tribe, Cassidy says that seeing them released into the area was "incredibly significant – for me personally, being able to do it on my own land, just remembering and thinking about the seven generations of our people who fought to have our rights and our land returned."
When the tribe’s land was being sold or stolen, local Māori named the mountain tops Kā Whenua Roimata, meaning the Lands of Tears, O’Regan explains, saying: "I hope manuhiri [visitors] will enjoy the nearby call of the takahē radiating from the valley floor."
When he was 10 years old, he was one of the first to see a live takahē in more than 50 years, as his father was a conservationist, and attended the second expedition to find them in 1949 with his father, held by a South Island doctor who spotted the birds in the Murchison mountains.
O’Regan still remembers "being told they were extraordinary birds", expressing: "This past week has been closing a very long circle," and called it “an absolute joy."
