The Greenstone Valley’s about to become the third wild site in the world to welcome back takahē.
Department of Conservation plans to return the endangered, native bird to the valley in August, also marking the first step of a plan to expand takahē numbers in the valleys around Glenorchy.
The flightless swamphen was thought to be extinct until some were discovered deep in Fiordland’s Murchison Mountains in 1948.
Since then, DoC has worked with Ngāi Tahu on the Takahē Recovery Programme to bring the population back from the brink — there are now almost 500 birds.
DoC media and comms advisor Trish Grant says the focus for takahē recovery now is to establish multiple self-sustaining wild populations
over large areas of the natural South Island tussock land.
Grant says at present more than half the overall takahē population living in the wild are in their ‘‘homeland’’ — the Murchison Mountains in
Fiordland and Kahurangi National Park, where they were first released in 2018.
Other takahē live at 18 island or mainland sanctuaries.
More details about the Greenstone release, including the number of birds involved, will be revealed closer to the time.
