Читать книгу Extreme Nature - Mark Carwardine - Страница 33

NAME	Chatham Island black robin Petroica traversi
LOCATION	Chatham Islands, east of South Island, New Zealand
ACHIEVEMENT	increasing in numbers from just five to 250 in 18 years

© Don Merton

New Zealand’s Chatham Islands are believed to have been the last Pacific archipelago to be visited by humans. Yet when people finally did visit, they stayed, and they did a pretty thorough job of doing what humans have always done to islands: stripped them of a lot of their native plants and animals. The Polynesians arrived around 700 years ago, the Europeans came along in the 1790s, and between them they caused the extinction of 26 of the islands’ 68 species and subspecies of birds. The main cause was introduced land mammals, and among the sufferers from cats and rats in particular was the 15cm (6in) endemic black robin.

By 1900 it had disappeared from the two main islands and survived only on Little Mangere, a tiny, windswept stack with sheer cliffs that helped keep predators away but didn’t offer the birds much protection from the elements. By 1972 only 18 were left. By 1976, seven.

In the meantime, though, the government had bought nearby Mangere Island and begun to reforest it, and all the birds were moved there. Nevertheless, by 1980, there were just five, with only one breeding pair. But by fostering eggs to other bird species on other islands – which improved the survival chances of the chicks and spurred the breeding female to nest again – conservationists painstakingly cranked the species back to life. Now there are about 250 black robins on Mangere and South East islands, and there are plans to repopulate other islands in the Chathams.