<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/29/prehistoric-bird-once-thought-extinct-returns-to-new-zealand-wild>
"Tā Tipene O’Regan, 87 years old, leaned into his carved walking stick and
reached down to a large wooden box. He paused a second, then slowly lifted the
lid. Out shot the hefty body of a bright turquoise bird, legs windmilling,
launching from its cage like a football from a slingshot.
“I am now largely blind, but I still saw them,” O’Regan says: a flash of blue
feathers and bright red legs racing for the tussocks.
That streak of colour was the takahē: a large, flightless bird, that was
believed for decades to be extinct. Eighteen of the birds were released in the
Lake Whakatipu Waimāori valley, an alpine area of New Zealand’s South Island
last week, on to slopes they had not been seen roaming for about 100 years. For
Ngāi Tahu, the tribe to whom the lands belong, and who faced a long legal
battle for their return, it is particularly significant, marking the return to
the wild of the birds that their ancestors lived alongside, in lands that they
had fought to regain.
Takahē are unusual creatures. Like a number of New Zealand birds, they evolved
without native land mammals surrounding them, and adapted to fill the ecosystem
niches that mammals would occupy. They are flightless, stand at around 50cm
tall, and live in the mountains. Their presence in Aotearoa dates back to at
least the prehistoric Pleistocene era, according to fossil remains.
“They’re almost prehistoric looking,” says Tūmai Cassidy, of Ngāi Tahu. “Very
broad and bold.” Front-on, their bodies can appear almost perfectly spherical –
coupled with the blue-green plumage, they look like a model planet Earth
perched atop two long, bright red legs.
“Someone once called us, the land of the birds that walk,” says O’Regan, a Ngāi
Tahu rangatira (elder). “There are few things more beautiful than to watch
these large birds galloping back into tussock lands where they haven’t walked
for over a century.”"
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-poverty-bangladesh-conservation-ecuador-indigenous-fire-australia/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
