Return of takahē – large, flightless bird – to alpine slopes of the South Island marks a conservation victory in New Zealand
ā Tipene O’Regan, 87 years old, leaned into his carved walking stick and reached down to a large wooden box. He paused a second, then slowly lifted the lid. Out shot the hefty body of a bright turquoise bird, legs windmilling, launching from its cage like a football from a slingshot.
That streak of colour was the takahē: a large, flightless bird, that was believed for decades to be extinct. Eighteen of the birds were released in the Lake Whakatipu Waimāori valley, an alpine area of New Zealand’s South Island last week, on to slopes they had not been seen roaming for about 100 years.
“Someone once called us, the land of the birds that walk,” says O’Regan, a Ngāi Tahu rangatira . “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.”In New Zealand, the return of wild takahē populations marks a cautiously celebrated conservation victory, and the return of one of the world’s rarest creatures.
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