A specialist search and recovery team has been deployed to recapture the last remaining survivors of a flock of endangered birds that absconded from a predator-free island in New Zealand during coronavirus lockdown. There are only 250 shore plover or tūturuatu left in the wild and they are the world’s rarest plover. Conservationists have been painstakingly reintroducing them to the mainland after they were almost wiped out by cats and rats by 1880.
The birds survived for another 100 years in a remote colony on the Chatham Islands, 650km west of New Zealand. Shore plovers are endemic to New Zealand and renowned for their “attitude and friendliness” – traits which alongside their ground nests make them highly vulnerable to predators.
In past releases shore plovers had been found to fly as far south as Christchurch in the South Island, and despite their small size they showed considerable pluck, Houston said. “It is frustrating, we can give them strict instructions, but they choose not to obey. They are a challenging species to manage, so it’s a great loss to then lose them. But we persist.”
Source: Guardian
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