Natural History

This is Heidi:

She is a setter that is engaged in the conservation of the Kakapo– or at least was in the April of 2003, when this documentary was made:

Source.

She is wearing a muzzle because kakapo are among the rarest birds in the world, and although she’s been trained not to mouth her quarry, it’s too much of a risk to leave her unmuzzled.

The use of muzzled dogs to catch kakapo for conservation purposes is not new.

In Rat Island, William Stolzenburg describes Richard Henry’s attempt to establish a kakapo reserve on Resolution Island in New Zealand’s Fiordland.  He used a muzzled terrier named Foxy to bay up the kakapo, which were rapidly disappearing from Fiordland. As I noted in an earlier post, the main kakapo predator avoidance behavior is to freeze in the presence of predators.  Because New Zealand’s wildlife evolved with only raptors as predators, the kakapo could easily use this technique to evade them. Kakapo are foliage green in color, and they live in forested regions.

Richard Henry was given the curatorship of Resolution Island in 1894, and he and Foxy spent years catching kakapo and kiwis and taking them to the island.  He didn’t think stoats would colonize the island, but unfortunately, they showed up in 1900.

And the whole project was ended.

Henry was the leading authority on kakapo at the time. He knew all about their habits, their diet, and their mating habits. However, because Henry had no formal education in zoology, he was generally ignored.

By the in 1950’s, it was assumed that the kakapo was very near extinction or had already become functionally extinct. In 1958, a single bird was discovered. In 1961, six were captured and transferred to a breeding facility. Four of these were dead soon after capture.

By the 1970’s, it was assumed that kakapo had gone extinct. But 14 were found in Fiordland from 1974-1975. All were male.

One of these was brought into captivity in 1975, and he was given the name “Richard Henry.”

Richard Henry is featured very much in Rat Island and the documentary I linked to in this post.

The kakapo named Richard Henry was the last of the South Island kakapo, for all the other birds that comprise the breeding program are Stewart Island kakapo.

He fathered three kakapo:  two males, Sinbad and Gulliver, and one female, Kuia.

Richard Henry’s genes are very important to the kakapo breeding program. By 2010, it became clear the the population was experiencing an inbreeding depression. Sperm from the males was malformed, and the females were laying infertile eggs.

Because Richard Henry was the last of the South Island kakapo, the potential contribution of his offspring could be very useful to saving this species.

Richard Henry died this January at an estimated age of 80 years old.

He was the last of his kind, and his genes might yet give his species a little more time on this earth.

But if it hadn’t been for the efforts of modern kakapo conservationists and their muzzled dogs, the kakapo would have very likely gone extinct by now.

It may now only be circling the drain, and we are working on a sort of managed, slowed down extinction.