A (Nearly) Complete History of Kākāpō in Nelson

Depending on whom you read, the story of Kākāpō in Nelson tends to be a footnote in Kākāpō research papers.

For most of us, that seems unsurprising. After all, the story of Kākāpō as presently told is one where extinction happened rapidly across New Zealand, and the species was almost exclusively confined to Fiordland by around the 1940s. There, they seemingly faded out in the 1980s and have most likely been extinct ever since.

Nelson isn’t even a footnote. It’s a virtually blank slate. So, what if I told you there’s a significant body of evidence to suggest that Kākāpō survived in Northwest Nelson (more commonly called Kahurangi National Park) into the last few decades? And that understanding their extinction in Nelson might better help us map extinction for Kākāpō and other species across New Zealand.

Across all the mainstream literature I’ve read about Kākāpō, the following information exists. Don Merton, Ralph Powlesland, and John Cockrem, in their 2006 paper "A Parrot Apart: The Natural History of the Kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), and the Context of Its Conservation Management," simply note that "the species became extinct in the North Island and in northwest Nelson early in the 20th century."

Meanwhile, G.R. Williams, who kickstarted Kākāpō conservation efforts in 1956, simply observed that "however, over about the last twenty-five years there seem to be no reliable records of Kākāpō having been seen in the Nelson Province, although there are rumours that they still occur in some of the western mountain ranges."

Nelson is often considered a blank slate when it comes to Kākāpō.

Sometimes a Footnote is all it takes...

Two sources kicked off my interest in the topic. The first was Quest for the Kākāpō by David Butler, a book published in 1989. Butler was heavily involved in the Kākāpō searches and was a methodical researcher who was one of the few individuals to explore primary sources not examined by the Department of Conservation at the time. In his writings, he notes six stories of Kākāpō being seen in Northwest Nelson between 1960 and 1985, including compelling accounts from four individuals who are still widely respected in the conservation field to this day (Dr. Graeme Elliott, Kath Walker, Andy Wilshire, and Colin Roderick). These weren’t backcountry users; they were conservation experts, all of whom had a reported Kākāpō sighting in Nelson decades after the species was supposedly extinct in the region.

The second is a study published by Joanne Carpenter in 2023, which, from her research of a very incomplete set of information (she was reviewing digital data that hadn’t been fully completed at the time of study), suggested a modelled extinction date of 1971–1979 for Kākāpō in Nelson. The piece of information that perplexed me was that the Kākāpō in question was actually shot near Arthur's Pass by a deer culler in 1957. This posed a problem because the source was deemed reliable by a team of researchers; however, it sat outside the known range of the species since the 19th century! How could the last Kākāpō in the top of the South Island have been found in an area where they hadn’t even been known to historically exist?

These two pieces of information flew in the face of existing data. How could Kākāpō possibly have existed in Nelson more than fifty to eighty years after their supposed extinction date unless there was more hidden beneath the surface?

Could Kakapo have survived into the Modern Era here?

Kakapo in Nelson a story Determined to remain untold 

Like most New Zealanders, I love a good challenge and set out to learn about the topic. I limited myself to only published information from books, newspapers, government sources, and journals. However, unlike other researchers, I don’t come from an ecology background. My background is in marketing, with an emphasis on data crunching, which means that when it comes to finding information online, I've built an entire business on how to find and utilise it at scale. To be clear, this information is all publicly available either online or in local government sources. It’s just that no one has ever bothered to collate it before or known where to look. It’s been a labour of love across three years, and I hope you enjoy it.

My first pit stop was determining what the known story of the final days of Kākāpō in Nelson looked like. To understand that, it’s important to explore patterns of extinction in other species. Typically, across four other species (Little Spotted Kiwi, Laughing Owl, Bush Wren, South Island Kōkako), final reports occurred between the 1930s and 1960s in Nelson Lakes National Park, the 1930s–1980s in Lake Sumner, Victoria Forest Park, Paparoas, and Arthur’s Pass, and from the 1980s to the present day in Kahurangi National Park. This was helpful because it gives us a broad date range to keep an eye on. While there will be variables, we could reasonably expect Kākāpō to follow roughly similar extinction dates.

Similarly, in Fiordland, the last Kākāpō were typically found in the head basins of U-shaped glacial valleys or on high cliff benches far above the valley floors. In the majority of instances, the elevation was 700–1,000 metres above sea level. So, we should lend more credence to ‘late’ stories that come from remote head basins and higher elevations.

A map of the region. Nelson Lakes National Park lies to the right of Murchison. The Taramakau River is in Arthur’s Pass, the Lewis Pass is in Lake Sumner, and the Paparoas are near Punakaiki.

Nelson Lakes National Park : Exploring Patterns of Extinction.

So, what reports exist from Nelson Lakes National Park of Kākāpō? Sitting an hour and a half outside of Nelson, Nelson Lakes National Park rises into the spine of the Southern Alps, albeit with less challenging terrain than further south. Butler records their disappearance from the area largely occurring during World War One, with Kākāpō disappearing from nearby Mt Owen around 1930.

Kath Walker, however, notes a bushman in the 1930s who commented that they were still present around Lake Rotoiti, and Moncrieff (a well-known author) makes some passing notes on their possible presence in the Nelson Lakes around this time (as well as sighting another in Kahurangi). Perhaps most notably, a final report was made by Ross Wylie of the Nelson branch of the Forest Service in 1946, describing a Kākāpō sighting in the Nelson Lakes between Lake Rotoroa and the Howard Valley on a spur at about 500 metres elevation.

So, was that the final story of Kākāpō in Nelson Lakes? Mostly gone by World War One, but with a handful of birds surviving until just after World War Two? The patterns we see of extinction suggest that they may have held on longer. A keen observer would note that all sightings come from lower elevations in the park, near the lakes themselves. The last Bush Wren, for example, was sighted nearly two decades later in 1968, right in the glacial U-shaped D'Urville and Sabine valleys, nearly fifteen kilometres away at the true limit of the park before it rises into the spine of the Southern Alps. Wouldn’t we expect the final Kākāpō stories to come from here?

I believe it’s helpful to remember that the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence; oftentimes, it just suggests our records are incomplete. We’re talking about deeply inhospitable terrain, searching for a species that is nearly impossible to find due to its camouflaged nature. Two stories exist after this date that are worth noting. Both are from hunters and not published, so while they don’t carry the same weight, they are still worth mentioning.

The first is from a Nelson family (who have asked to remain nameless for now) who reported that their father, an experienced bushman, saw a Kākāpō at the end of the Nelson Lakes in the early 1960s. He reported it to the Department of Internal Affairs, which sent a letter back that he still has. Several searches were apparently made, but no evidence was found. While no DOC records exist, this is unsurprising, as the entirety of Kākāpō research from the Lands and Survey Department from this period is presently unable to be located in government archives.

The second is from a private message from an old hunter who has declined to be named or interviewed but was adamant that Kākāpō were present "at the end of Nelson Lakes" in the 1960s. In isolation, it’s not much to go by, but it fits with a broader picture of extinction in the area. Given that he was unaware of the other information in this article, it’s worth noting, if nothing else.

The last verified Kākāpō in Nelson Lakes National Park were found at the end of these lakes in the 1930s and 1940s.

Down South: Prospectors, Poaching, and the Paparoas.

So, what’s next in our story of extinction? Well, let’s take a dive into the sighting that kicked this all off—a Kākāpō supposedly from near Arthur's Pass in 1957, which records state was killed by a deer culler. I found an old interview with a deer culler named Harry Scott that referenced the story. But to find the full account, I had to submit an Official Information Act request to the Department of Conservation, who released an interview with Mike Bennett, a well-known deer culler familiar with Kākāpō from South Westland. He seems to think the story happened in 1958 (a year different from Harry Scott), but both were interviewed thirty to forty years later, so it’s likely a case of not recalling exactly which year.

Mike explains that they were hunting near Jacksons in the Haipu Block as deer cullers, and "another culler" (he remains mum as to who it was in his party) shot a bird at dusk, mistaking it for a Kea. The Wildlife Service allegedly became involved and asked the cullers to keep it quiet, as they had been illegally hunting on the flats near the Jacksons highway close to the Taramakau River, and they were concerned that a scandal might arise. The story, in isolation, seems almost fantastic—hundreds of kilometres away from any other known source, a Kākāpō is shot in an area where they’d never been recorded, by a group of hunters at a low elevation. Were it not corroborated by multiple witnesses familiar with Kākāpō, it would be thrown out as lunacy.

Or would it?

The road to Arthur's Pass. It was on flats similar to these that a Kākāpō was shot in 1957/58.

Historical Clues : Digging deep into West Coast History

Because G.J. Roberts, the Crown Commissioner of the land, noted in a 1907 report that Māori could remember Kākāpō in the Bealey, Waimakariri, Otira, Hurunui, Taramakau, and Rakaia Rivers, and that in some places they were still present. G.R. Williams also corroborates that in the 1880s, Kākāpō had been present. But this was fifty years later on the river flats. How could Kākāpō have still been present?

The first clue is Mike Bennett himself, who commented in 1989 that while hunting above the bushline on the Taramakau River in 1957, he found Kākāpō feeding sign above the bushline on Mt. Howe & Mt. Alex. He was quite familiar with the species and observed their decline along with the South Island Kokako in South Westland, and if one sighting by him can be accepted as true, there’s no reason to believe he lied about the second.

But we must consider the terrain. The West Coast is an isolated place, and the terrain is extremely rugged. Glacier U-shaped valleys are common, and the bushline here is well in excess of 1500 meters in elevation. Few people live in the region, and my own experience of them (as the son of a former West Coaster) is that they’re very wary of outsiders. Was it that Kākāpō were not present? Or that they were just never studied here well? Again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Past papers record that two prospectors reported a Kākāpō ‘west of Lake Sumner’ in 1922. While Williams, in his 1956 account of Kākāpō, provides a footnote confirming he had received a record of a Kākāpō in the Robinson River in Lake Sumner Forest Park in 1925. A third record also exists from David Butler’s research from the Lewis Pass in 1937. Another record from a Bill Bennett (possibly a relative of Mike) exists from 1989 when he spoke of Kākāpō in the Ahaura River Catchment in the late 1950s. Finally, Butler reports that road workers on the Lewis Pass found Kākāpō present in 1964.

All of this paints a small but fascinating picture of isolated fragmented remnant Kākāpō, largely at extreme elevations in the area from the 1920s to mid-1960s. However, what was the state of the population? A handful of birds spread across several hundred square kilometres? How do you account for one still surviving on the river flats in the late 1950s when historically they vanish from lower elevations long before they do at extreme elevations?

Punakiki provides a firsthand example of the primeval legacy the Paparoas hold  

Across the Ranges : The Secret Lies in the Paparoas

Across the ranges, the Paparoas may hold the answers. This primeval range of mountains borders Greymouth and sits between the Grey River to the south and the Buller River to the north. Yet here, a wealth of information exists that helps paint a picture of what the broader area may have looked like.

In 1923, a J. Drummond wrote that ‘bushmen in Greymouth reported that not far from the town, in accessible but not often visited gullies, Kākāpō could still be found.’ Similarly, Forest and Bird magazine noted in 1924 that ‘large colonies’ of Kākāpō were listed as being present in the mountains near Buller, which provided a baseline understanding that Kākāpō were common in the area at the time. Yet this proves to be an understatement. A recent comment by a senior DOC worker implied that the last Kākāpō to be observed breeding on mainland New Zealand occurred in the early 1900s and that the 1930s were probably the final time Kākāpō successfully bred in NZ. Even then, it would have been hundreds of kilometres south in the cold mountainous depths of Fiordland.

Yet in 1947 or 1948, while prospecting east of Punakaiki, C.E. Wilks saw two Kākāpō and a chick (it’s implied the two adult Kākāpō were not seen together). Wilks was intimately familiar with Kākāpō, having previously reported them in Glenorchy, Lake Sumner, and now near the Paparoas. It’s worth noting that this was not the main spine of the Paparoa mountains but seemingly in the vast and treacherous criss-crossed network of gullies suitable for prospecting prior to reaching the mountains. Wilks would note that the last Kākāpō he saw in the area was in the Paparoas themselves in 1955.

The Punakaiki record is corroborated by another record of a Kākāpō behind this area from 1958 by another prospector on the coastal side of the Paparoas. Yet it’s the final note in the Paparoas chapter that provides the most evidence. In 1964, a Kākāpō was sighted by two tramline workers in the Rough River area of the Paparoa ranges. It was observed for several moments before it disappeared. Notably, this was on the river flats, not above the bushline.

It’s this final record that probably paints a sign of the times. We have three records of birds between 1948 and 1964 that were not in the spine of the Paparoa mountains but instead in the bush or on flat ground, and another record from the river flats near Arthur's Pass of a Kākāpō on the river flats there. None of these (though other reports exist) were above the bushline, at high altitude, or in the head basin of glacial U-shaped valleys.

Why were the last Kakapo sighted not high up in the mountains?

Pulling the threads together : When did Kakapo vanish?

When did the Kākāpō largely vanish from the Paparoas, Arthur's Pass, and Lewis Pass? It’s hard to say. There’s only a single historic record ever from the tops of the Paparoa mountains, but plenty from the river flats and lower bush areas. I’ll keep repeating it over and over again: evidence of absence isn’t absence of evidence. My own father worked in the area in the early 1970s and described it as largely unexplored, ‘entirely absent of people except for the occasional deer culler or prospector.’ While he never heard Kākāpō, he notes he never thought to look for them either.

It's also helpful to remember the challenges in finding Kākāpō. They're a nocturnal, flightless parrot, almost invisible to the naked eye in the forest due to their green camouflage. Historically, most Kākāpō were only ever found when booming, which might happen for a few months every second or third year. Our mountains are notoriously hard to navigate, and Kākāpō tend to boom from elevated, exposed locations, whereas most outdoorsmen tend to camp in sheltered valley floors. While in optimum conditions, Kākāpō can be heard kilometres away, our windswept mountains rarely offer these. Instead, wind and rain would have limited the distance a booming bird could be heard from.

In thirty years of work in Fiordland, only two Kākāpō were ever 'stumbled upon.' The rest were found due to thousands of man-hours of effort to find and locate booming males.

Similarly, in the 1800s, on the Tin Range of Stewart Island, miners likely lived alongside hundreds of Kākāpō and yet never once mentioned them. It's helpful to keep in mind that every genuine sighting of a Kākāpō represents a statistical anomaly of the 'right' place at the right time. To find a Kākāpō is the exception, not the rule.

The area was almost entirely absent of people, and the best we can do is use the example we have from Nelson Lakes National Park, where extinction probably occurred around fifteen to twenty years after birds vanished from the valley floors, suggesting a rough extinction date of the early to mid-1980s. Though this is a rough estimate at best, it’s matched by trends we see in the Tutuko Valley and Sinbad Valley, where most birds had vanished from the valley floor by the late 1960s and extinction occurred fifteen to twenty years later on the high bench and head basin slopes. 

So what about Kahurangi National Park?

Well, buckle in because things are about to get wild.

Kahurangi National Park

 Kahurangi : A Hidden World of Kakapo

G.R. Williams notes that Kākāpō were present in Gouland Downs and the Karamea River in the first quarter of the 19th century. While Mr. Clouston, the caretaker of Gouland Downs, noted that Kākāpō were present in considerable numbers in 1923 and reportedly had a pet Kākāpō observed between 1920 and 1930. So considerable were the numbers in the Gouland Downs region that a number were killed for a London exhibition in 1924, while prospectors reported them as still being common in the 1930s.

It’s worth noting that this extends down to Takaka itself, which reportedly had large numbers of Kākāpō present behind it in the 1930s. Corroborated sightings also came from Mt. Arthur in 1930, between the Upper Mokihinui and Karamea River in 1934, and the Wangapeka Saddle in 1934. Reports here seem to dip over the next three decades.

Only two sightings exist from this period: in 1953, Michael Anderson and his father were hunting on Hailes Knob in the Waitui Stream near upper Takaka when they observed a Kākāpō feeding in a clearing for three minutes in rugged bush. While in the mid-1950s, a Dr. Peat, likely from the Canterbury Museum, reported hearing Kākāpō calls on the aptly named Kākāpō River.

It’s worth noting that 1939-1945 saw the outbreak of World War Two, and in the immediate aftermath, the rediscovery of takahē in Fiordland led to the closing of the Murchison Mountains, which deeply isolated the hunting community and made them reluctant to report sightings. The impact of this reluctance to share Kākāpō information due to fear of loss of access cannot be overstated and is corroborated by a series of articles written by NZ newspapers during this period of time, where hunters bemoan not being consulted by the Wildlife Service and offer to show the Wildlife Service where Kākāpō lived if their hunting grounds were not entirely closed down.

For nearly two decades Kahurangi kept her secrets close

Wildlife Service Expeditions : Fatal Mistakes

The Wildlife Service commissioned a major expedition in 1958, which spent fourteen days combing Gouland Downs in poor weather, searching for Kākāpō with a young dog. Rather perplexingly, the party ‘determined’ that it was unlikely Kākāpō had ever been present in large numbers this century. They further went on to write that Clouston had probably exaggerated the presence of Kākāpō, and upon their advice, further expeditions were largely cancelled.

It’s worth digging into this for a moment. In the 1960s, in Fiordland, more than 1000 man-days were spent in the field, and only a handful of Kākāpō were found. Yet official estimates place the population in Milford Sound at 100-200 birds at this time. When searching for the Kākāpō male Richard Henry in 1975, it took ten days combing an area of just a few hundred meters where he was known to be present to catch him. The idea that Kākāpō were entirely absent from a 5000-square-kilometer area because a team couldn't find them during fourteen days of poor weather is a ludicrous assumption that seems to have hamstrung efforts to locate Kākāpō in the area after this point.

It highlights the importance of methodical, well-funded research over a large period of time, rather than one-off research trips by individuals not well accustomed to the area. It wouldn’t be the last time this caused problems for Nelson Kākāpō. One final record comes from this period, though it wouldn’t emerge for some decades. Snow Meyer, the old NZ Forest Service Ranger from Kahurangi National Park back when it was a state forest, is corroborated by a number of witnesses as having spoken about a Kākāpō being present on the Karamea River. He repeatedly told a number of trampers in the 1980s that the old male was booming from Garibaldi Ridge near Karamea Bend Hut during the 1950s and early 1960s. Snow was both a legend in the area, and given his wealth of expertise, there’s no reason to doubt this record.

 

Snow Meyer last heard a Kakapo booming in the Karamea in the 1950's & 60's.

The Heaphy Track & Mt Arthur Tablelands : A Final Refuge

The 1960s brought with them a renewed volume of Kākāpō reports, in part because of both the creation of the North West Nelson Forest Park in 1965 and the rediscovery and restoration of the Heaphy Track. While on Mount Arthur, geological surveys appear to have stumbled across a number of Kākāpō.

The restoration of the Heaphy is of particular note because of a spate of sightings over a short period of time. A Ministry of Works team reported a Kākāpō on the Heaphy Track in 1967. The following year, a former NZ Defense Force member and his family reported seeing another Kākāpō on the Collingwood side of the Heaphy Track. A third sighting was made not far away in the Iwitiuaroa Range of the Mackay Downs in Kahurangi National Park, south of Rocks Point. A fourth possible sighting was reported to a local paper in 1970.

The sightings don’t end there. Robyn Allan of Nelson recalls his father hearing them in the 1980s while repairing huts up in Gouland Downs. Colin Roderick, who actually worked with Kākāpō at Mount Bruce, reported hearing booming in Gouland Downs in 1978. An active track and bowl system was also reported by Kath Walker and Dr. Graeme Elliott in 1982.

It’s worth focusing on this for a moment. This was one of the first well-restored ‘Great Walks’ throughout remote New Zealand, and its opening seems to have coincided with a sudden increase in Kākāpō sightings. In my estimation, it’s also the nail in the coffin of the report a decade earlier in the same area suggesting Kākāpō no longer were present. Instead, I’d argue it’s a sign that Kākāpō were still present at least intermittently across the medium-altitude Gouland Downs.

Gouland Downs shares many similarities with southwest Stewart Island. It sits at about six to eight hundred meters altitude on a cold, wind-swept mixture of tussock tableland and an impregnable hedge of native bush. It wasn’t until 1918 that stoats were even recorded here, almost twenty-five years after they were first recorded in Fiordland.

Kākāpō seem to last be found on tablelands such as these. It’s worth noting that the other location of many sightings, Mt. Arthur, has similar tablelands but at higher altitude. In fact, tablelands across the country are a common theme in late Kākāpō sightings, with Lake Fraser Tablelands in Fiordland being the location of three 1960s Kākāpō sightings. Anecdotally, I’ve had several hunters claim that Kākāpō were present until the 1970s on the Stockton Tablelands. Lending credence to this is the recent rediscovery of Haast Tokoeka on the Cascade Tablelands in South Westland.

Similar to Gouland Downs, the Mount Arthur Tablelands saw a Kākāpō sighting in 1972 and then another in 1983, when two birds were heard booming on the tablelands, and feeding sign from a third bird was found further along the tablelands. It’s worth noting that both the 1972 and 1983 sightings were in the exact same location near Salisbury Hut. While at the base of the tablelands, Dr. Miles Hursthouse reported seeing a Kākāpō near Leslie River and Peel Stream in 1978.

Gouland Downs is home to the Heaphy track.

Scattered Reports: Kākāpō Across Kahurangi

I'll perform a spell and grammar check while preserving the original wording:

Across the park, a Canterbury caving team allegedly reported a Kākāpō booming from above the Buller River in the early 1970s. While a team reportedly recorded a Kākāpō booming above the Karamea River in the 1980s, the recording was later lost. Neither of these reports has been corroborated, though, and should be treated with a degree of skepticism.

More authentic reports include two sightings of Kākāpō in the Castles area of Aorere Valley, one in 1974 and the other in 1981. The 1981 sighting was by Kath Walker, one of the leading experts on insect life in New Zealand today. She ended up being involved in a significant number of Kākāpō searches and wrote a fifty-page report on Kākāpō in North West Nelson that I obtained from old government archives through an official information act release. Elsewhere, F.S. Biddle reported Kākāpō calls from the head of the Ugly River in 1976. While in 1987, Brian Thomas reported booming from Happy Valley Saddle near Corbyvale.

Perhaps the most notable and equally tragic part of the story of Kākāpō in Nelson comes from just how close we were to saving some of them.

A Map of Kahurangi. The Red line is the Heaphy Track which runs through Gouland Downs. Castles Area is to the Right of the Collingwood side of the track. Centre left is the Roaring Lion River. The mid screen Blue icon to the right indicates Mt. Arthur. The Dommet and Ugly Rivers are centre left. The Karamea River lies to the bottom left.

Roaring Lion River : A Reprieve for Kakapo.

In early December 1984, a party of four reported hearing booming near the headwaters of the Roaring Lion River. One of the group, Andy Wiltshire, was an NZFS worker from Nelson who had spent a month looking for Kākāpō on Stewart Island and was familiar with the species. The following month, a team of four returned with a trained dog and searched the area for five days. The party included the legendary Ron Neilson, who had significant experience working with Kākāpō across Fiordland and Stewart Island and had been instrumental in saving the species.

A forty-page report privately commissioned by the Wildlife Service details that two active track and bowl systems were found, both of which had recent feeding signs nearby. While nearby, a third possible track and bowl system and feeding sign were discovered too, though it was partially damaged by rain. Ron Neilson himself confirmed that he firmly believed the track and bowl systems had Kākāpō present, and the Wildlife Service released an internal memo that they wanted the first captured Kākāpō to be called 'Andy' after Andy Wiltshire. It's worth noting that the track and bowl systems were both around 1200 meters elevation, as were the two reports from Kath Walker. The Mount Arthur sightings were at 1200 meters elevation, while the calls in the Ugly River were heard at 1000 meters elevation but were immediately next to a 1200-meter elevation ridgeline. Even the Happy Valley Saddle sighting, while at a lower elevation, was on a ridge extending from Mount Connor, which sits at 1257 meters elevation. Surely these could not be mere coincidence, but instead a theme - all locations in the 1980s where Kākāpō were confidently found were at higher elevation than any Fiordland birds were found. No Fiordland bird was ever found above 1100 meters, mostly because the steep nature of the terrain didn't allow birds to reach higher elevation, at least in areas studied. Perhaps here lies a clue. Should Kākāpō remain in Fiordland, the place to look would be above 1200 meters elevation.

Yet it's here that the story takes an odd turn. Butler notes that significant traction was gained in searching North West Nelson. Don Merton himself, in a private letter, acknowledged his belief that a population was probably present. But poor weather hampered searches, as did inexperienced staff. It's not immediately clear as to where some things went wrong. But one report claims nearly thirty possible track and bowl systems were 'found' over a two-year period, most in the nearby Gouland range.

It's not hard to see how these isolated mountains could have been home to Kakapo

A Tragic End: How Budget Pressure Impacted Saving Kākāpō.

But it's this set of track and bowl systems that probably derailed research efforts across the area. Funding was a major issue; the entire Kākāpō recovery program was at threat of being defunded in the late 1980s, and untrained volunteers were heavily relied upon for Nelson searches. Arnold Heine seems to have been an individual who, according to Department of Conservation records, found most of these 'later' track and bowl systems.

Under pressure to make cuts, a senior member of the department flew into the Gouland range and studied eight of these track and bowl systems over the course of a day. It's notable that he chose to study only track and bowl systems found by inexperienced volunteers (Kath Walker, Andy Grant, and Arnold Heine), none of which came from the Roaring Lion River, where experienced Kākāpō recovery team members had conducted their research.

His conclusion was that these eight systems were the results of a lightning strike, but in a stunning decision, he recommended that the entire Nelson program be canceled as a result of his findings in a single afternoon. At least the team in 1958 had spent fourteen days before concluding Kākāpō were not present! It's notable that he himself appears to have had no experience with Kākāpō, and while it's been forty years, a cross-reference of his name (which I've chosen not to publish because he appears to still be living and does not deserve the hate) to all known Kākāpō documents I can find at least suggests this was his one and only piece of Kākāpō fieldwork. To my knowledge, no one ever visited the active systems in the Roaring Lion River again, and the story of Kākāpō in Nelson ends on a tragic footnote. All fieldwork was shelved and so well hidden that it could not be found in a search for these documents in 2021, and it took a second request in 2024 for the relevant reports to be found and released.

A tragic end to the story of Kakapo in Nelson

Painful Lessons: What can we learn from this?

The story of Nelson Kākāpō seems to be a heartbreaking tale. But for government budget cuts, we might have rescued a handful of birds that would have been genetically invaluable to the modern Kākāpō population. Modern Kākāpō suffer deeply from inbreeding, and a single Fiordland bird, Richard Henry, represents about twenty percent of unique alleles in the population. The addition of a handful of Nelson birds would have been an incredible genetic boon.

Why then was the program not followed up? There are more reports from Nelson in the 60s, 70s, and 80s than Fiordland. I believe much of the issue lies with the 1958 party, who very publicly denounced the continued survival of Kākāpō in Nelson. They had successfully found a Kākāpō in Fiordland the previous year (albeit with a different, more experienced dog) and, without the benefit of hindsight, probably felt that if Kākāpō were present, they should have been easy to find.

Yet by comparison, a six-week study of Port Pegasus and the Tin Range in the 1960s failed to turn up any evidence of Kākāpō, despite several hundred likely being present. This was mostly due to the weather, and its impact cannot be underestimated on the 1958 search.

Additionally, there has never been a central system of collecting Kākāpō sightings across New Zealand. Reports were largely made to regional offices or, because multiple government departments historically handled backcountry management, to uninterested officials who never passed on relevant information. It's amazing how the many reports from Nelson have skeptical comments from officials in the margins. Outside of David Butler and Kath Walker, no one ever actually compiled any reports together and studied them as a whole. Even Butler and Walker both lacked the access to digital information we have today to compile a complete picture of Kākāpō in the park.

We stand on the shoulders of giants who searched the park for Kakapo

The Ugly River : The Final Mystery

The story of Kākāpō has one final footnote. It's one that's as yet unverified, but I've heard the story from so many separate hunters over the years that it does seem to have a grain of truth. Purportedly, in the last decade, an eccentric older Motueka hunter claimed to have found active Kākāpō sign above the bushline in the Ugly River. He returned from the bush with green Kākāpō feathers (which a number of hunters I've spoken to have been to his house and seen), feeding chews, and Kākāpō droppings.

Ultimately, I've not been able to schedule an interview - and those I've spoken to have suggested I'll be unlikely to. There's a real sense that he'd like to not speak publicly about his experiences. Perhaps the ring of truth comes from the location itself and the elevation. The bushline in the Ugly River sits at between 1300-1500 meters, and it backs onto the other side of the mountains in the Roaring Lion River, where Andy Wiltshire found Kākāpō in 1985. Both things none of the hunters would have known when they shared the story.

It fits the pattern of where you'd expect to find the last Nelson Kākāpō. However, without corroboration, we'll never know the truth. In some ways, that's a fitting end to the story of Nelson Kākāpō, a deep sense of mystery, of wonder, and that drive to get out into the remote northwest Kahurangi wilderness where the last Kākāpō were found.

It's made me want to visit again. To climb to the top of the Ugly River and camp above the bushline this coming summer. To stay up late after dark…and just listen.

Even if all that responds is silence.

It'd be worth it to experience that.

An Unexpected Footnote: A Kākāpō on the Kiwi Saddle in 1994

In October 2024 John Coulter contacted me after reading this article with his own Kākāpō story from the Kiwi Saddle in 1994. His experiences have the ring of truth, and I firmly believe he crossed paths with a Kākāpō only thirty years ago in Nelson.

In February 1994, John Coulter embarked on a solo expedition, trekking deep into the remote wilderness of Northwest Nelson. He had been traveling off-track for five days, navigating rugged terrain with no clear path. After being dropped off at Murchison, he made his way up the Mohikoniu, crossed the south branch, and eventually found himself in the Johnston Valley. His route was intense, full of physical challenges, and by the last night of his journey, he was utterly exhausted.

That night, John camped up on Kiwi Saddle, high in the mountains at above 1100 meters elevation. He had endured a grueling day and had briefly lost his way in the valley, pushing his body to its limits. There, on the saddle, he crawled into his sleeping bag, too tired to pitch a tent, and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

In the dead of night, John was abruptly awakened by a sound that terrified him. It was a booming noise, loud and resonant, shaking the stillness of the night air. Having studied music and sound, John was deeply familiar with the behavior of sound waves, and he could tell that the source of the noise was extremely close—probably no more than five to ten meters away. It was unnerving. Between the booming, he heard screeching sounds, something unfamiliar and eerie. It reminded him of cats fighting, the kind of sharp, chaotic noise that pierces the quiet. There were both high and low shrieks – another element he couldn't make sense of. The combination of the deep boom and the screeches went on for at least an hour before he, delirious with fatigue, managed to fall back to sleep.

John had brought an old film camera with him, but no recording equipment. He cursed his luck, wishing he had a portable recorder to capture what he was hearing. The sounds were so intense and unsettling that he was freaked out, though at the time, it wasn't widely known that Kākāpō, known for their booming calls, also made screeching noises.

The next day, after making it back to civilization, John contacted the Department of Conservation (DOC) office in Nelson. He described the sounds he'd heard, and they offered the only explanation they could think of: the noise might have come from a bittern, another bird known for its loud calls. But they didn't feel this fitted what he'd heard. Firstly at that time bitterns were probably rarer than Kākāpō with less than a few hundred found across New Zealand. Secondly they're lowland wetland birds, not found at extreme elevations far from the coast. He was convinced that it had been a Kākāpō, even though he was repeatedly told there were both no Kākāpō in Northwest Nelson and there had not been for a century.

What solidified his belief even further was a recent event where his partner purchased a plushie Kākāpō toy that screeched similarly to what he had heard in the mountains. John concluded that it must have been a single bird, hiding just below the bush line on the Little Wanganui side of the crest. The bush was sparse, with a tangled forest floor, and the sound had come from somewhere to his right, slightly down the hill. There were few large trees for cover, just a leafy forest floor and the opening of the saddle 10 metres above. The bird was sheltering there, not far from his camp.

Despite the overwhelming urge to investigate, John had been too tired and too frightened to get up. Besides, he couldn't remember where his torch was! The noise had been so loud that he felt exposed, vulnerable in the dark, with only his sleeping bag for protection. It was a moonless night, pitch black, and the booming seemed to echo through the mountains, inescapable. He never rose from his sleeping bag, feeling both physically and mentally overwhelmed by the sheer volume and proximity of the sound. The booming, he knew, was unmistakably Kākāpō, but the screeching rattled him. It was deafening, and he felt an element of danger, as if the bird, unaware of his presence, was issuing an alarm.

John was 25 at the time and had just finished his first year at university. He had grown up with a fascination for birds, and the Kākāpō had been of particular interest to him ever since he had seen them on television as part of a conservation program. As someone who had studied sound extensively—he would later gain a PhD and become a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland—John was confident that what he had heard could not have been anything else. The experience stayed with him for years, a vivid memory of an encounter with one of the world's rarest birds in a place where it wasn't supposed to exist.

Sources

David Butler - Quest for the Kākāpō

Joanne Carpenter - Palaeoecological and historical observations of an endemic New Zealand bird (Strigops habroptila, kākāpō) reveal shifting drivers of decline during 800 years of human settlement

Forest and Bird. "Information on Kākāpō – Appeal for Help." Forest and Bird, vol. Unknown, no. 149, 1963, p. 18.

Don Merton, Ralph Powlesland, and John Cockrem "A Parrot Apart: The Natural History of the Kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), and the Context of Its Conservation Management Butler, David.

Tasman District Biodiversity Overview. Local Government Report. November 2008.

Toy, Sandy. Biodiversity Treasures of Flora. A stocktake of the ecological values of the Salisbury Ecological Management Unit and the threats they face. August 2016.

Butler, David J. "Birdlife of the Nelson Lakes National Park South Island, New Zealand." Science and Research Journal, vol. 24, 1991.

Williams, G. R. "Birds of Gouland Downs." Notornis, vol. 8, no. 8, 1960, p. 236, https://notornis.osnz.org.nz/system/files/Notornis_8_8.pdf.

Williams, G. R. "A Review and Re appraisal of a near extinct species." Notornis, vol. 7, no. 2, 1956, https://notornis.osnz.org.nz/system/files/Notornis_7_2.pdf.

Lloyd, Brian, and Kath Walker. Kākāpō Search Roaring Lion River, North West Nelson, January 1985. 1985. Harper, A. P. "OUR BIRDS IN THE WILD, THE KĀKĀPŌ."

Hindmarsh, Gerard. Kahurangi Calling. Potton and Burton, 2010.

Papers Past - Keyword Kākāpō NZ Official Information Act release 2020/21 Keyword search Kākāpō post 1950

NZ Official Information Act release 2024: Keyword search Kākāpō Kahurangi. NZ

 Archives Request 2024: Keyword search Kākāpō North West Nelson

Internet Archive - Keyword Search Kākāpō Post 1900.

Journals Past: Keyword Kākāpō

Department of Conservation: (Who provided the primary data for Joanne Carpenter's study). 

Various interviews with private individuals.

N.B. Undoubtedly there is more to this story to tell. I'd love to interview Graeme Elliott, Kath Walker, Andy Wiltshire and Colin Roderick to my knowledge all of whom are still living. I'd also encourage Karamea, West Coast, Nelson locals to ask older hunters and outdoorsmen their stories and pass on any that come up.