Showing The Takahe:Fifty Years of Conservation Management and Research by William G.Lee

Polynesian settlement of the islands of New Zealand about 1,000 years ago and large-scale European colonization in the 19th century caused massive environmental changes for indigenous animals. Fifty-five species of endemic birds, or 41 percent of land and freshwater species, were lost. In response to these extinctions and the marked population decline of many species, national government agencies supported conservation initiatives throughout the 20th century. For more than fifty years attempts to conserve the takahe (Porphyrio hochstetteri) a large, flightless, herbivorous bird have pioneered techniques for protected natural management, habitat manipulation, captive rearing, wild releases, and island translocations. The takahe is well known in New Zealand as a bird thought for several decades to have been extinct, and then rediscovered in the wilds of Fiordland in 1948. The story of the takahe has been integral to the progress of conservation science and management in New Zealand. This book reflects on that story.