Conservation of the Kakapo and Takahe

They are the world's last giant flightless island birds, both were once thought lost, but today are slowly making a comeback; this is the story of the Kakapo and Takahe.
#kakapo #takahe #conservation
The ability to fly has allowed birds to reach nearly every terrestrial location on Earth, letting them colonize islands so removed from other parts of the world that they could take over as the dominant vertebrates of the ecosystem. Without mammalian predators and no competition from mammalian herbivores, several lineages of birds became aberrant versions of their ancestors, flightless giants that grazed on the lush vegetation of their islands. New Zealand had more flightless bird species than anywhere else. Weka are large flightless omnivores, at night kiwi search out invertebrates in the leaf litter, but like those other islands most of the flightless birds were herbivores, the 9 species of moa were the dominant large herbivores, and some of the largest birds to ever live; there were also giant flightless geese grazing on vegetation. Like all of these giant aberrant flightless island herbivores the arrival of humans on their islands quickly led to their extinction from a combination of hunting and invasive species devouring their eggs. However on New Zealand two species were able to hang on and are the last of earth’s giant flightless island birds, the Kakapo and the Takahe. I have been fascinated by these two species since I first learned about their existence, and the Kakapo is my favorite animal. Both are the largest living representatives of their kind; The Kakapo being the largest parrot and the takahe being the largest living rail. They also both only narrowly made it to the present, and at one point were both thought lost forever. This is their story...
0:00 Giant Flightless Birds
2:06 The Takahe
5:01 The Kakapo

Video Sources
Video "Legend of Birds (1962)" from Archives New Zealand

Sources
Mills, J. A.; Mark, A. F. (1977). "Food Preferences of Takahe in Fiordland National Park, New Zealand, and the Effect of Competition from Introduced Red Deer". Journal of Animal Ecology. 46 (3): 939–958. doi:10.2307/3651. JSTOR 3651.
Mills, J.A. Lavers, R.B. & Lee, W.G. (1984) The Takahe: A relict of the Pleistocene grassland avifauna of New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Ecology 7:57–70.
Ballance, Alison A. (2001). "Takahe: the bird that twice came back from the grave". In Lee, William G.; Jamieson, Ian G. (eds.). The Takahe: Fifty Years of Conservation Management and Research. Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press. pp. 18–22. ISBN 978-1877276019.
Cockrem, J. F. (2002). "Reproductive biology and conservation of the endangered kakapo (Strigops habroptilus) in New Zealand". Avian and Poultry Biology Reviews. 13 (3): 139–144. doi:10.3184/147020602783698548
Gibbs, George (2007). Ghosts of Gondwana; The history of life in New Zealand. Craig Potton Publishing.
Hill, S.; Hill, J. (1987). Richard Henry of Resolution Island. Dunedin: John McIndoe.
"GAINED IN TELLING". Otago Daily Times. 8 January 1949. p. 6. Retrieved 7 April 2019 – via Papers Past.
Lloyd, B.D.; Powlesland, R.G. (1994). "The decline of kakapo Strigops habroptilus and attempts at conservation by translocation". Biological Conservation. 69 (1): 75–85. doi:10.1016/0006-3207(94)90330-1.
Thomas, Rachel (14 March 2016). "Kakapo to have genomes sequenced in a world first for science". Stuff. Retrieved 5 December 2018.

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Welcome to Ecotasia! On this channel you can find wildlife footage and short documentaries on the natural world. I am an early career biologist who was inspired by the likes of the BBC Natural History unit, PBS, and Animal Planet as a child and then more recently by various nature YouTube channels to share my love for animals and nature. My goal is to document and highlight the interesting ecology and behavior of organisms I encounter, as well as cover and elucidate conservation and biological topics. Please Subscribe so you can join me to marvel and to learn twice a month.

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[naturewithgabe]

Great video! I learned a lot. New Zealand is wild. Love your channel.

[katherinej]

Very interesting story! Conservation tends to be a rather depressing topic, so it's great to hear success stories like this. Great work, as always!

[BioBush]

I kept finding new Kakapo items in the frame. Very fun. Takahe and Kakapo are both fascinating, and I learned new things about both of them from you. I hope that both of these populations are able to recover to levels where they are stable in the absence of introduced predators. Keep up your good work!

[animaleducationwithcoleshi]

Always interested in the flightless birds of New Zealand! The growing population of the takahe in recent years is an interesting story, but still not out of the woods. Enjoyed the video, thanks for sharing such great info.

[TheWildlifeBrothers]

As usual, you have broken down some really cool topics and some incredibly unique species, great work JJ! Kakapos and takahes are some of the most amazing relics of an earlier evolutionary age, and I can’t get enough of them. Very cool video!
- Harrison and Evan

[GeoZoo-official.]

Great video! I love the Kākāpō, so this video is dear to me.