Here's New Zealand's Stuff with an interesting offshoot of the recent
Kakapo hunt.
For the veteran searchers seeking signs of the long-lost South Island kokako, a valley east of Puysegur Point in Fiordland National Park sounds like a breakthrough.
The bird was believed extinct in the 1960s, a tuneful victim of predators and loss of habitat.
But the South Island Kokako Investigation Team has kept compiling reports of the grey bird with orange wattles at each side of the beak.
And now an off-shoot of January's hunt for more kakapo in Fiordland has led to hopes that the team has a new valley to check in detail, with a community of the supposedly extinct kokako living there.
However, the Department of Conservation is still
not convinced.
The Department of Conservation is not convinced that supposedly extinct South Island kokako could still be roaming through Fiordland.
The species is assumed to be extinct, although DOC said it was possible they could survive in low numbers in remote parts of the South Island and Stewart Island.
