Erica: Kia ora! I'm Erica Wilkinson and
this is the DOC Sounds of Science podcast. Kia ora! Ko Erica Wilkinson tēnei. He kōnae
ipurangi tēnei, e pā ana ki ngā Sounds of Science. Every episode we talk about work being done
behind the scenes by DOC’s technical experts, scientists, rangers and the experts in between. Kia ora koutou katoa, hello to you all.
I'm very excited to welcome to the show, the world's most renowned kākāpō scientist,
Dr. Andrew Digby, kia ora Andrew. Andrew:
Kia ora Eric
a, it's great to be here. Erica
Thanks for coming! Andrew is an expert in all
things kākāpō. You may know him from the-artist-formerly-known-as-Twitter, where he offers behind the scenes
insights into the world of kākāpō and takahē. Andrew’s social media promise is
“come for the videos, stay for the science”, and that is exactly what we're doing today. Let's
talk about the science of kākāpō recovery. Erica
Would you like to introduce yourself to
our lovely listeners, Andrew? Andrew
Yeah, su
re. Tēnā koutou katoa, ko Andrew Digby ahau.
Ko te Kaitohutohu Pūtaiao o kākāpō me takahē oo Te Papa Atawhai e mahi ana.
So I am Andrew Digby and I'm the Science Advisor for kākāpō and takahē
with the Department of Conservation. Erica
Kia ora. Is that just the coolest job in the world? I mean, it's DOC, and
then it's kākāpō and takahē. Tell us about your role at Te Papa Atawhai.
Andrew Yeah, I think I'm very, very lucky, I get to
look after and help look after these amazing birds. I'm resp
onsible for the for the science
component of both of those recovery programs with the Department of Conservation—So helping to
understand what it is that we don't know and how do we find it out.
Erica That's huge. That's a big responsibility.
How did you get into this line of work? Andrew
Yeah. So I am … I come from a slightly different background. I used to be an
astronomer, and I've ended up switching careers to conservation biology. I did a Ph.D. with kiwi and
kind of came into this r
ole after that. So I'm not kind of your traditional conservation person. I
come from a little bit of a different background, which I think sometimes helps.
Erica Yeah, definitely, and astronomy, it seems like
such a change of path. And you're not a Kiwi by the sounds of it.
Andrew Yeah, no, I grew up in the UK and studied there.
I lived in America for a while and came to New Zealand about 18 years ago.
Erica And didn't leave.
Andrew No and didn't leave. This is home now.
Erica
And what does an average day
entail for you and your work now? Andrew
Yeah, it's probably a clichéd answer, but there's no such thing as an average day and it
really depends. Quite a lot of the time I'm behind a desk helping to manage our programs, analyzing
data, that sort of thing. But also, quite a bit of the time—the part I really, really love—is getting
out to the field, getting my boots on, getting out onto the islands or into the mountains, and then
yeah, doing that, doing the mahi o
n the ground. Erica
What's the most unexpected thing you've encountered in the field?
Andrew Um, most unexpected thing? I think … seeing groups
of kākāpō has been quite unusual to see. We've always traditionally thought of kākāpō as solitary
animals and birds that just live by themselves. But we are seeing more and more often now, kākāpō
in groups. And, you know, I've seen- we've found a couple of juveniles in the same hole.
Andrew I've seen two birds in the same tree. Some of our
team
has seen up to five birds in the same tree. So yeah, that's definitely a case of that, we're
learning more and more about them and what we thought was the case is actually … is actually not
true. And then as we start to restore kākāpō to their more natural numbers, we’re actually
beginning to see some of these behaviours which are normal. But we didn't think they were.
Erica Ok, so they're not solitary. And what I've heard
that the kind of younger ones in breeding season might hang out a
ltogether?
Andrew Yeah, that's right. The teenage kākāpō really
can behave a little bit like human teenagers sometimes—or some human teenagers. They can be
pretty noisy at night and they muck around. If you're trying to sleep in a tent, they will be …
[well] I've had like four or five juvenile males around the tent all making noises. They'll be like
peeking out from behind trees, practicing booming and just climbing around the tent, making a bit of
a nuisance of themselves really. It's,
it's pretty amazing, it’s pretty endearing to see.
Erica That's the best way to lose sleep ever. That
sounds amazing. Now, most of our listeners will know what kākāpō are, the flightless green parrot,
endemic, endangered. But few will have seen one. I have never seen one. What might immediately
stand out to someone encountering a kākāpō for the first time?
Andrew There's two things. One is the camouflage. It’s
just how hard they are to see when you see them in their natural setting in
the bush. And I've stood
two meters from a kākāpō—I was able to smell it, but I couldn't see it. I was actively looking for
it, but could not see it, and it was literally two meters away.
Andrew The camouflage is that good. So I think that's
number one. And number two is the size. Most people, when they see a kākāpō for the first
time, the first thing they always say is, oh it's much bigger than I thought it would
be. And they are big birds. So, you know, you can get up to four kilograms
for a male and
they're quite a decent size, especially when you're like holding one on your lap, doing
a health check or something like that. Erica
And I have two questions from that. How, how big, what ball size are we talking?
Andrew …If they're standing on the ground they'll be
just below sort of knee high sort of thing. Yeah. So the kind of be 50 centimeters long as
well so, yeah, a few kilograms and they've got very big claws, too. So that kind of makes
them look a little bit bigge
r as well. Erica
And what do they smell like to you? Andrew
The smell [question] is interesting. It's so hard to describe smells, but everyone always
says musty, which kind of is true, and [kākāpō] have a very sweet smell. The males in breeding
season are the ones that smell the strongest. And it's quite a floral sort of smell, a little
bit earthy and yeah, not a bad smell at all. Andrew
And it's really strong. So as you're walking along the track, you will be able
to smell a kākāpō which is
nearby and, and that's, that's humans with our rubbish noses. So yeah,
yeah. So the scent is really unique. It's quite … it's very, very strong.
Erica And I know everybody loves kākāpō, but, but what
do you most like about it? What draws you to the species?
Andrew I like (and sorry, this is me putting my scientist
hat on) I like that they don't follow the rules, that they're different. And pretty much every
time we study something about kākāpō that- we find out that they’re just diffe
rent to every other
bird and often most other mammals as well. So, you know, for example, we've done some work on
vitamin D and vitamin D, the use of vitamin D, and the world of vitamin D in kākāpō seems to be
completely different from any other vertebrate as we understand it.
Andrew It's like- and we're looking at aging kākāpō
and all the rules that you have of how to age birds and different tests you can do. They
don't work on kākāpō. So there's, you know, lots and lots of examples. Ev
ery time we study
something new about them, we find out, yip they just do not follow the rules.
Erica And can they look after themselves?
Andrew Yeah, they can. Yeah. They can definitely hold
their own. And they're actually probably a little bit fiercer than you might think. And so yeah,
I've seen a female kākāpō kill a petrel in front of my eyes, well, it was on a video feed from
a nest. But that often happens if they tend to share nests or burrows. So a petrel will be
trying to roos
t where a kākāpō has nested and the kākāpō doesn't like petrel coming into its
nests and the fighting is quite ferocious. Andrew
They'll use their claws and their bill and they will quickly dispatch the petrol. The problem
from a conservation point of view is that in the nest often there'll be some quite delicate eggs
and when there's a big fight going on then they tend to get broken. So yeah, that causes issues.
But yeah, they can definitely hold their own and they will hold their own again
st people as well.
Andrew So we have some individuals which will defend
their nest pretty robustly against people. It's always a good idea to wear pretty strong gaiters
when you are going to a kākāpō nest of those ones, those particular individuals too, to you to give
yourself a bit of protection. They’ll try and go for your shins and your knees.
Erica So you've been attacked by kākāpō?
Andrew Yeah, I have been attacked by a few kākāpō.
Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a slightly unnerving
experience and you have to just be as
defensive as possible. But yeah, just don't hurt the kākāpō. Or let them hurt you, and
just get out of there as quickly as possible. Erica
That's- oh my gosh. It’s all for the good of conservation and, you do know
notice personality differences across chicks who were hand-reared and those who weren't.
Andrew Yeah, we do. So we try and hand-reared kākāpō as
little as possible, but sometimes it's necessary to save the life of that kākāpō. And we do tend
to
notice that those kākāpō which are hand-reared, do not have a fear of humans as much, and they tend
not to like humans as much either. They tend to be the ones which are a little bit more aggressive.
Andrew And so for example, some of our founder kākāpō,
(which are the original kākāpō found on Rakiura Stuart Island and Fiordland back in the
seventies and eighties), they tend to be quite docile and quite calm. It's kind of-
it seems like they don't actually recognize humans as a threa
t or a predator at all, whereas
the hand-reared kākāpō kind of know humans and they kind of have learned not to like us very
much and they're certainly not scared of us. Andrew
And yeah, so it does vary a lot from between individuals too. So that's one of the
crazy things I really notice about kākāpō is just the individual variation.
Erica Gosh that is the opposite of what I would have
thought. I would have thought that the kind of hand-reared ones would be a bit more chilled
around peop
le. But no, they don't like you. Andrew
Yes, some are, some are, but quite a few of them aren't. And they tend to
be quite vocal and noisy and yeah, so we do notice a lot of differences and it doesn't follow set
rules but they do, there are these tendencies. Erica
Okay what's the kind of weirdest or most interesting thing you've seen kākāpō do?
Andrew I think the killing the seabird is quite a weird
one. Yeah. And the males actually, when they're at their bowls, will also kill seabirds as
well,
kill petrels which get close to their bowls too, and … might possibly sometimes try and mate
with the dead seabird as well. There’s some crazy things going on. Another thing that
springs to mind is that they're pretty fierce, we’d found a male who had pretty much been scalped
by another kākāpō in the last breeding season and … they’re territorial, [so] they will defend their
display sites and they'll have quite a … they'll have some pretty robust fights. Wwe found one,
his activity w
as low, so went to check on him and he pretty much lost all of the feathers
and all of the skin from the top of his head. [At this point, everyone in
the room had horrified faces] Andrew
He had to go to hospital and recovered well. But um yeah, we have had
males kill each other too. We had one, you know, bit another one's jugular and killed it, that sort
of thing. So yeah, they are robust, they're not, they're not necessarily the fluffy, docile things
that they might appear to be, but when
they need to, they can stick up for themselves.
Erica Robust, not like the misleading marketing
that we've been we've been told, No, not the soft toy.
Andrew Yeah, that's right.
Erica And you mentioned them trying to breed, breeding
is one of the biggest challenges, right? And it's quite unusual. Can you talk us through that.
Andrew Kākāpō infertility is probably the biggest issue
that we have, or actually it’s not technically infertility. It's low hatching rates. So
of about all
of the eggs that are laid, only about half of them hatch into kākāpō and
only about a third of them turn into kākāpō that fledge. So the productivity rate is very low.
Normally in birds that figure would be up at like 90% or something.
Andrew Even with a species like takahē, which has been
through a similar sort of genetic bottleneck, that's about 80% or so fertility. So kākāpō are
and have real problems with the fertility. We think it's mostly a genetic basis due to that
inbreeding tha
t they've had. So they’ve been through this tiny, tiny population bottleneck,
there's not much genetic variation. So we think that's the cause.
Andrew But there are other possibilities, you know, for
things like diet, for example, could possibly play into that fertility. So that's kind of why we're
doing quite a lot of research to understand more about that and try and understand how to mitigate
it. And one of the things that we've discovered recently is we think maybe population density
may
be affected by and may affect fertility as well. Andrew
And so the more females there are, there tends to- seems to be, some sort of mate
guarding going on. The more times a female mates, the more fertile her clutches as well. So
there's quite a lot of things that, you know, we're trying to understand to try and turn that
around and try and improve that fertility. Erica
Okay. Can you walk us through how the breeding season
works and what your role is during that time? Andrew
Yeah, sure.
So kākāpō breeding seasons are a big deal. And one of the unusual
things is that kākāpō don't breed every year like most birds do. They only breed about every 2 to 4
years. And that's in response to the masting, or the mass fruiting of certain tree species. So when
it does happen, it's a really, really big deal. Andrew
There are very few kākāpō, so we want to make sure every single egg that's laid has got as
much chance of surviving to a fully grown kākāpō as possible. So we manage it very
intensively.
So we'll have teams on islands where kākāpō are nesting and we will set up a lot of electronic
monitoring gear at the nest. So we have cameras at the nest, we have proximity detector sensors,
we'll have data loggers so we can tell remotely when the kākāpō is at the nest, how long it's
been there, what its activity is like on the nest, how well it's incubating, that sort of thing.
Andrew So that's sort of quite an intensive process.
And we will monitor the eggs, we'll look a
fter the eggs and make sure that they're fertile. If
they’re not fertile we’ll remove them. And then when the chicks hatch, we pay a lot of attention
to the chicks. So depending on the value of the chick, we will weigh it, sometimes every night,
sometimes every three nights or sometimes every week, and we'll give it a health check.
Andrew So that goes right throughout the whole process
until the chick fledges, around about 70 days old. So, yeah, each nest gets a lot of attention.
And we'
ll follow those chicks once they fledge, they’ll hang out with their mother for quite a few
months, and we'll follow them for about the next six, six months or so. Quite intensively.
Andrew So that whole process from start to finish
normally takes about a year or so. That includes things like artificial insemination, which we do
to try and improve the fertility of kākāpō, to try and improve the representation of some individuals
which have never bred before. And so yeah, there's I guess t
here's a lot of different facets to the
breeding season, and my role is a bit of a mix. Andrew
I'll kind of help manage that process and provide some technical oversight,
but I'm also a pair of boots on the ground, I’m a ranger too, so yeah, love doing that.
And the whole team does that. We all basically spend time on the islands. We're all out at
nighttime, checking nests, sleeping in tents, up on the tops of islands near nests to look after
the chicks in the eggs, that sort of thing. Andr
ew
So, you know, pretty much everyone just mucks in and we all contribute pretty evenly.
Erica That sounds like kind of a wonderful experience.
What do you mean by the value of the chick? Do you mean how certain it is to survive?
Andrew Um no, actually we have a bit of a—this might
sound slightly mercenary, but we have to do this. So we have a scoring system for how valuable
each chick is and we base it on its genetics. So if it's got really rare genetics and it's, you
know, quite unre
lated to other individuals, it's lineage is not very well represented. We actually
have a scoring system of um, gold, silver, bronze, we have chalk as the lowest one.
Andrew So if it’s a gold chick it gets checked
every night, if it's a chalk check, it gets checked every week. So- and the reason
we do that is because the kākāpō conservation is really intensive. And I could not believe when
I first joined the program how intensive it is. It's probably one of the most intensively managed
s
pecies in the wild, in the world, I would say. Andrew
But that's not sustainable in the long term. And so one of the things that we have
to do is step back and we try each breeding season to really, really make an effort to do that.
And one of the ways of stepping back as well, you don't treat all birds equally and you cannot
continue as the population grows to check every chick, every night.
Andrew We have to, you know, take some steps to reduce
that intensity. And so that's what we're d
oing here to try and find a way to do that in a
structured way, which kind of makes sense from a population point of view.
Erica Yeah, it does. It sounds a little
bit mercenary at the start, but it must be so intensive for … for the gold
chicks and for you. You can't do everything. Andrew
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we base it on other things as well as like their weight and
how they're doing for example. So if a chick looks like it's doing quite well for them, we might not
check it for a f
ew nights, for example. And we're also mindful of the fact that every time we check
a chick and we interact with kākāpō, we might be having some impact that we're not aware of.
Andrew Yeah, it's important to try and keep things
as natural as possible. The idea is to give as light a touch as possible, but not so light
that birds die. So yeah, striking that balance. Erica
Tell me about lek mating. Andrew
Yeah. So lek mating is … kākāpō are the only parrot species which lek mate, and that bas
ically
is a group mating system. Lek means play in Swedish, actually. And so what happens with kākāpō
is that the males congregate in certain areas and they display to the females they basically
have a singing competition and then the females, there's a female choice mating system.
Andrew So the females basically go around all the males,
choose the one that they like and then they'll mate with them. And sometimes they’ll mate with
more than one male, but they often visit lots of males an
d for whatever reason decide they don't
like that one. They'll go to this other one over there. So yeah, that's how they mate, it means
that we can't really control it that much. Andrew
So from a conservation management point of view, it's an interesting mating system and it's kind of
crazy to be on a kākāpō island in a in a breeding season here. All the males booming and—
Erica Must be loud. Yeah.
Andrew Yeah, it is loud and they can get quite aggressive
to you. And like a few times I
've had a male come booming and come running at you, booming at you
to try and chase you off his display site because they defend it against other kākāpō and-
Erica Oh because you’re a threat?
Andrew They don't like anyone being there. So yeah,
when they run and boom at the same time it sounds quite weird.
Andrew So yeah, it's quite an unusual sound.
Erica Wow! Um let's talk about disease. Another big
thing for kākāpō. A few years ago there was a big aspergillosis outbreak during breedi
ng season.
Can you give us a bit of an overview of that? Andrew
Yeah, so just um, so briefly on that, aspergillosis is a fungal pneumonia, it affects
humans too. It's a big human health problem. We hadn't really had much of a problem with it with
kākāpō before, only one case. But in 2019 we had a big outbreak in a breeding season affecting
females and chicks. We had 21 individuals affected, nine died as a result of that.
Andrew It was a huge effort. We ended up flying just
over 50 kākāpō
off the island to hospitals, including human hospitals, to get them CT scanned.
Pretty much most of the vets in New Zealand, wildlife vets, helped and pitched in. We
had a big response internationally as well to try and understand what caused this. And so
yeah, it was a pretty massive task and in fact we actually had a small aspergillosis outbreak
in 2022, the following breeding season too. Andrew
But yeah, it was on a smaller scale, so it's definitely
a problem. It seems to be a possibly
a growing problem. We're trying to understand a bit
more about what causes it and whether our cons- whether our management is even implicated
in some way. And because there’s some already unusual things we found out about the
type of fungus which caused this. Andrew
So yeah, it's an ongoing research, but definitely disease
is one of those things that’s a real concern for kākāpō and for any critically endangered species
where you've only got a few individuals. Erica
Look forward to hearing h
ow that goes. Now Aspergillosis was a new term
for kākāpō lovers. Ah but there's another disease with a name that's much more straightforward. Kind
of does what it says on the tin. Kākāpō are highly susceptible to a disease called crusty butt.
At the risk of asking you to state the obvious, Dr. Digby, is crusty butt.
Andrew Crusty butt, crusty bum, cloacitis. Yeah,
it kind of does what it says on the tin, and it's basically you get these ulcerations and
sores around the cloaca of the kāk
āpō. So that's where the kākāpō poo’s out of basically. So, and
that's the all purpose hole for birds, for mating and for pooing. And so this is actually a disease
which has caused us quite a lot of problems. Andrew
It started in 2002, the first time we, we noticed it so it’s been around for more than 20
years and it's affected quite a lot of the kākāpō, we’re at over 40 cases of cloacitis now. And
about half of those have actually happened in the last three years. So it's accelerating, but
we
don't know what causes it. We don't know if it's a virus, if it's a bacteria, if it's something
like an autoimmune disease, like some inflammatory bowel disease in human, for example.
Andrew So it's yeah, we've been doing a lot of research
and we're still doing some research at the moment to try and understand what causes it. And then
once we know what causes it, we can try and, try and mitigate it. We can treat it. So if an
individual gets it, we find an individual with it, we can t
reat it.
Andrew We normally send them to hospital. Sometimes we
can treat them on the islands, but we can treat it sort of topically and give them some treatment
on islands and they recover. We’ve probably had some individuals die from it. And so it would
be fatal left unchecked. But yeah, it's one of those things which is causing us quite a few
headaches in terms of management, for example, quarantining and that sort of thing.
Erica Are kākāpō just more susceptible to disease than
ot
her birds, or do you just notice the impacts because there are only so many of them?
Andrew It might be that they're more susceptible
because of their genetic issues, that that low genetic variation could possibly make them more
susceptible. So if you have individuals which are very closely related, then you could get a disease
come along, which wipes most of the population out. That's something you have to be really
careful about with small populations. And it might also be because we mo
nitor them quite closely
that we know other birds do get sick too. Andrew
Um but I think it's partly the fact that when you've got such a small population,
you know, even a few disease cases can have a big impact on the size of that population and the
impacts. So I think that's part of it too. Erica
Yeah. And what are we doing to, to kind of mitigate this?
Andrew Yeah. So yeah, we monitor kākāpō pretty closely.
Each kākāpō has got its activity tracker, pretty much its own Fitbit, and we c
an monitor
those remotely. So I could log on now and look online and see what the activity of kākāpō has
been. So if a kākāpō gets sick, we can see a drop in activity and then we can intervene.
Andrew And with things like avian influenza on the
horizon, you know, that's been causing devastation around the world. It hasn't hit New Zealand
yet, but it's definitely something that that we're preparing for and readying ourselves for
in case it comes to New Zealand. And, you know, with a disea
se like that, you could easily lose,
you know, half a population and half a species, even if you've got a small number of birds.
Andrew So yeah, we have to be pretty
vigilant about that sort of thing. Erica
Yeah, it's like having all your eggs in one basket and how, how dangerous that can be, I guess.
I love that kākāpō have Fitbits. Essentially. Kākāpō tech is such a fascinating world. Can we
talk a bit about gene sequencing? What is that? Andrew
So, yeah, the gene sequencing started bac
k in 2015 when a group in the United States sequenced
the genome of the kākāpō for the first time. So that's basically picking one individual and
sequencing all of the genes of that individual. So you get a complete map of the genes on that
particular individual. But at the time for kākāpō, there was only 125 kākāpō in existence.
Andrew So we thought if we've done one, maybe we
can do all of them, let’s do all 125 of them, and get all of the genomes for all of the kākāpō.
And the reason
we wanted to do that is because kākāpō are managed really individually, like every
kākāpō has got its own name. Every kākāpō has its own transmitter, every kākāpō has its own
feed station and we have individual behaviors that we know about.
Andrew We treat them, we manage them separately. So
having genetic information on top of that for each individual is a natural progression. So we
started up a program to do that. We sequenced all 125 and we have the populations grown since
then and we
've now actually got nearly 350 kākāpō genomes. So that's all of the living
birds and quite a few of the dead ones too. Andrew
And I think that's probably the most comprehensive gene library of any species in
the world. I think. So that's an amazing resource that we have. And we've opened that up to anyone
around the world who wants to use those data to research and particularly we're keen on, how can
that research, how can that genetic data teach us some of the things that are problem probl
ems for
kākāpō. So things like infertility, for example, and disease.
Andrew And so yeah, how can, how can we use that
genetic data to understand those problems. Erica
Wow, and did the genome sequencing of every living kākāpō help
you make conservation decisions going forward? Andrew
Yes, it has, so we’re already using that information for things
like translocation, for artificial insemination, we now are developing some tools with the help of
researchers at Genomics Aotearoa at the Univ
ersity of Otago and elsewhere, to um, to provide tools to
understand things like how heavy should a chick be at certain stages in its in its growth, based on
its genetics, based on who its parents are. Andrew
So we kind of have a bit of a template to be able to use this genetic information to help
guide the management in a practical sort of sense on the ground.
Erica I love science. That's fantastic. Can you tell
me a bit about the research into ancient diets of kākāpō? How do you know wh
at they used to eat?
Andrew Yeah, so I guess this comes back down to poo, and
you’d be kind of surprised about how often poo is useful in conservation. And we have a lot of
conversations about poo. And so this is actually really interesting because one of the things about
kākāpō is we have a little bit of an artificial situation. We have a remnant population.
Andrew We don't know what's natural, but by looking
at things like fossilized poo from hundreds or thousands of years ago, we ca
n understand more
about what they ate, what, where they lived, what they bred in response to, and some work done by
researchers at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, has done this and taught us quite a few things,
for example, about the importance of beech trees and beech forest ecosystems to kākāpō breeding.
Andrew And that's something we just don't see. We
have not seen kākāpō breeding in response to beech in the modern era, but it's actually
really important because there's a lot of
good beech habitat in New Zealand and if we
can identify that and be sure that that's a good habitat for kākāpō, that suddenly opens up
more possibilities for where we can put them. Erica
Those are some of the fascinating innovations, and there are also some
that sound highly questionable. Could you tell us about the spermcopter.
Andrew Oh the spermcopter? Yes. So the spermcopter is
actually something which I think kind of worked, and it has a reason. So we do artificial
insemination in
kākāpō. And one of the problems when you do artificial insemination is
that you need to get the sperm from the male to the female as quickly as possible, because
then you have a greater chance of success. Andrew
And the problem with kākāpō is that often they will be up trees and they will often be
on different sides of an island. So it might take, I say, an hour and a half or so to get from the
male to the female, if you're walking. And so we were starting to do some work with drones and we
thought, well, how about we fly the sperm from the male to the female?
Andrew And we worked out that we could fly what
would normally take an hour and a half to walk in about 8 minutes. And so we did that
in 2019 breeding season. We basically bought a commercial drone and just adapted it slightly
and put a little container on it. And we flew the sperm from the male, across the island to the
female, to get it there much more quickly. Andrew
That’s, that's kind of the sort of thing that I
'm- we always
try and think a little bit outside the box in the program and do some crazy things. And you
might have seen things like the kākāpō helmet, for example. And so yeah, there's always, always
things like that and some of, some things work, some things don't.
Andrew But you know, you've got to be bold
and try these things sometimes. [PART ONE OUTRO] Erica
As you’ve just heard there, Andrew has so many brilliant stories that we
decided to split his episode into two parts. In part
two, he answers some questions
sent in by you – our wonderful listeners! We also delve into some of kākāpō conservation’s
biggest wins, as well as the disappointments, the challenges, and the continual
learnings from managing such an intriguing and unusual species.
You won’t want to miss it.
Comments
Thank you.