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The total # of kakapo on earth is now about 200, the recovery program has brought that up from about 60 birds 20 years ago history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

The total # of kakapo on earth is now about 200, the recovery program has brought that up from about 60 birds 20 years ago history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/File:Kakapo-population-size.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D#/media/F... They're flightless, it doesn't help them escape rats, cats, and stoats. Despite all of that, I can still appreciate how incredible a brand-new kakapo cloak must have looked. Perhaps one day they will again number in the thousands. There are islands with no rats or predators where they can breed safely, now. Related trivia: the Takahe was thought to be extinct until someone went far inland to a remote valley in the 1940s and found a population there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81p%C5%8D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takah%C4%93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takah%C4%93

olliej 4y ago
Yeah alas they evolved while essentially the only predators were birds, for which the strategy of being very still and looking like dense forest floor was effective. Then people came with rats and what not, and the English brought things like stoats and rabbits for hunting. :-(
- tialaramex 4y ago
  The history of the rats is interesting too. The first human settlers probably brought rats, and successive waves of settlers bring more, and better, rats. When Europeans show up, they too bring new rats. But we today might get the idea it's all their fault, they're just the last straw. If you're a moderately successful Pacific rat living on Aotearoa and white settlers just showed up on a boat then even though you're an invasive pest the rats on that boat are as a big a threat to you as to the native wildlife.