Mystery illness kills birds

2004-07-13 07:32

Auckland - Three of the world's rarest parrots, New Zealand's big green kakapo, have died within a space of 24 hours, prompting an environmental emergency, conservation officials said on Tuesday.

The deaths, apparently from septicaemia, a form of bacterial blood poisoning, came after New Zealand department of conservation officials last week moved 19 birds to an isolated island.

With only 83 kakapo now left worldwide, conservation officials were on Tuesday preparing for an emergency regime of hospital-style intensive care for the 16 still on the island.

Recovery programme leader Paul Jansen said it was not thought that the island move had created stress, saying the symptoms associated with the dead birds and one sick bird pointed to other problems.

Hopes that the illness can be contained were buoyed by the recovery of one 22 year-old male, Dobbie, who had shown some of the same behaviour as the dying birds.

"He seems to have recovered of his own accord," said Jansen.

"I don't know whether that tells us we're through the worst of it or whether Dobbie is a lucky boy.

Debate still on

"The prediction is that those birds are the extent of the mortality, and we shouldn't see any more," said Jansen.

"We're still debating about whether we grab birds and do an intensive care hospital programme - regardless of whether they show symptoms - or we do the treatment in the field."

Kakapo (strigops habroptilus) is a nocturnal flightless bird that climbs trees. Adult males weigh up to 2.5kg making them the world's biggest parrots - with some living for around 100 years.

They have been under threat for a long time. Pre-European indigenous Maori, hunted them easily. Europeans settlers later brought cats, ship rats, stoats, weasels, ferrets and possums, which found kakapo easy targets.

In the mid 1990s there were just 50 kakapo left, but an intensive breeding and feeding programme saw the numbers slowly increase.

Most of the birds live on bleak Codfish Island at the southern end of New Zealand, with a smaller protected population on Maud Island at the top of the South Island.

Last week, in a bid to guarantee the security of the birds, the conservationists moved the 19 birds from Codfish Island to Chalky Island, 120 kilometres away, just off the isolated Fiordland National Park.

Conservation Minister Chris Carter was shocked at the deaths of "one of our most precious and loveable bird species".

"Everything that can be done is being done to save this critically endangered species."

The Royal Forest and Bird Society's Kevin Hackwell said disease was a serious threat to New Zealand wildlife.

"With such a tiny population, every female kakapo is critically important to the survival of its species," he said.

"This is a sad reminder of just how vulnerable they are."

- AFP