Grainy phone footage leads to rediscovery of lost species after 46 years
It had been thought little spotted kiwi (also known as kiwi pukupuku) only survived on small islands and protected areas where it was translocated following significant declines.
Luke Hill had been part of a crew tasked with controlling tahr, an invasive species of fast-moving alpine sheep that has adapted to the rugged 46,500-hectare Adams Wilderness Area in the Southern Alps, and if numbers go unchecked, they can destroy plants that provide food and shelter for native species.
Like Australia, New Zealand is overrun with feral animals, and it was the attacks from stoats, cats, and ferrets, and dogs, combined with habitat destruction, that led to the decline of the little spotted kiwi.
It was close to midnight, and Hill was making his way down to camp through 'tough bush' when he spotted the rare bird. Thinking quickly, Hill whipped out his mobile phone and began to film. The video he took that night (seen below) is grainy, and it's only just possible to make out the small bird behind a fallen log.
Related: Concern as rare birds retreat to mountains where giant moa became extinct
There are five species of kiwi, and because Hill has a background in conservation, he immediately knew he wasn't looking at one of the common ones. But he was yet to understand the 'magnitude' of his sighting.
Hill's footage contained enough information to excite the Department of Conservation, and it choppered out a ranger and his sniffer dog to the remote location. Ranger Iain Graham's mission was to catch one of the birds and extract some of its tiny feathers for DNA testing.
Out in the sodden wilderness, he could hear the kiwis 'duetting', distinct calls between a male and female. But the birds proved too fast to catch. 'We were in rough terrain, in typical west coast weather, and I was running out of dry clothes,' he said.
With time running out, they captured the female on their final night. He then returned with a colleague and tracked down the male, and both have been fitted with transmitters.
All kiwi species are threatened with extinction.
Unmanaged populations are declining by two per cent every year.
Their eggs are roughly six times bigger than those laid by most birds their size.
The last time a little spotted kiwi was seen on the mainland in the wild was 1978. That year, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta became a global sensation after the release of the movie Grease, disco songs by the Bee Gees were topping the charts, and the total population of New Zealand was just over 3.1 million people.
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Emily King, the leader of the Kiwi Recovery Group, said the rediscovery this year was 'thrilling' for the conservation world.
'Despite years of targeted searching, we hadn't found them until now,' she said.
'We're grateful to the hunter for reporting this and capturing evidence. It was like finding a needle in a haystack, but he pointed us to the right patch to start searching.'
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Shapiro told Live Science that they were "still in the process of selecting the surrogate species for moa de-extinction." Emus lay large green eggs, around 5 inches (12 cm) long and 3.5 inches (9 cm) wide. Still, that's nothing compared to a South Island giant moa egg, which were 9.5 inches (24 cm) by 7 inches (17.8 cm). RELATED STORIES —'We didn't know they were going to be this cute': Scientists unveil genetically engineered 'woolly mice' —Colossal's de-extinction campaign is built on a semantic house of cards with shoddy foundations — and the consequences are dire —Dodos were fast and powerful, not slow and inept, definitive preserved specimen suggests "A South Island giant moa egg will not fit inside an emu surrogate, so Colossal will have to develop artificial surrogate egg technology," Rawlence said. Colossal briefly mentioned artificial eggs during its moa announcement, but didn't provide details on this part of the process. Live Science asked Colossal whether they could explain how Colossal will hatch a South Island giant moa. "Our exogenous development team is exploring different strategies for artificial egg incubation, which will have application both for moa de-extinction and bird conservation work," Shapiro said in an email.
