Concern as rare birds retreat to mountains where giant moa became extinct: 'History repeating'
Birds and animals in New Zealand and Australia are believed to be retreating to remote and inhospitable regions to survive.
Species on the verge of extinction are retreating to cold and isolated mountainous areas that don’t provide favourable conditions for their survival. Worryingly these are the same refuges where their giant cousins made their last stand.
Some of New Zealand's endangered flightless birds, including the takahē, weka and great spotted kiwi, are surviving in the same places where bones of the extinct moa birds are found. The largest of the six species of moa could reach 3.7 metres high, but they were wiped out within 120 years of human settlement.
“It's definitely a case of history repeating itself. They're following the path to the same sanctuaries moa did hundreds of years ago,” global change Associate Professor Damien Fordham told Yahoo News.
Over 80 per cent of New Zealand’s birds are listed as threatened with extinction. Most of the animal species on the island are birds, and many are flightless because the country had 60 million years of isolation before humans arrived, bringing predators like possums and stoats, chopping down forests, and polluting waterways.
Related: New Zealand prepares to protect native birds from avian influenza
New Zealand's highly charismatic birds under threat
Today seven of eight species of flightless bird that remain on New Zealand's main islands are threatened with extinction.
The best known are the country’s five species of kiwi. But there’s also a flightless parrot called the kākāpō which famously tried to mate with a cameraman during the filming of a BBC nature documentary. And anyone who has recently flown to New Zealand would know of the takahē, which is featured in the national carrier’s inflight safety video.
New Zealand's two species of rail are perhaps less well known, but it’s entirely possible they’ll become famous soon. Because most people hadn’t heard of the weka until this week. And it made international headlines after one was killed and eaten by an American during the making of a survivor-style reality television show.
Where are the flightless birds surviving?
The project was led by the University of Adelaide and supported by an international team that included experts from the State University of New York, University of Auckland and University of Melbourne. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
They found birds were surviving in suboptimal conditions in areas including Tititea on the North Island and the Fjordlands to the south, which humans have largely avoided.
“These are some of the most cold and isolated mountainous areas. And for those reasons, they're really just visited by bushwalkers and campers,” Fordham said.
Australia's native animals likely following similar pattern of retreat
Sadly, Fordham doesn’t think the problem of threatened species retreating to remote and inhospitable areas is confined to New Zealand.
Woman 'gutted' after fish eggs from 'rare and secretive' species vanish
Beer bottle loving Aussie bowerbird caught flying 4km to fulfil obsession
Mystery 'Bigfoot' ape hidden inside remote museum could rewrite history books
He’s just secured funding from the Research Council of Australia to look at the problem back home. It will focus on the once widespread numbat, western quoll, eastern quoll, greater bilby, koala and brush-tailed rock wallaby.
“We know that many Australian mammals were quite broadly ranged. And now we find they've had to contract in the face of European colonisation into quite small pockets of habitat,” he said.
“We are thinking, based on these results, that these may not necessarily be in the optimal habitat.”
Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? Get our new newsletter showcasing the week’s best stories.
