Move for saddlebacks

Forest and Bird, Volume 23, Issue 2, 1 May 1992, Page 3

Move for saddlebacks

Tim Higham

SOUTH ISLAND saddlebacks have been reintroduced to Fiordland after an absence of nearly one hundred years. In March Department of Conservation teams stationed on the Big and Kundy Islands off southern Stewart Island caught 60 saddlebacks in mist nets. The birds were transferred by helicopter to Breaksea Island at the entrance to Fiordland’s Breaksea Sound. South Island saddlebacks came perilously close to extinction in 1964 when their last sanctuary, Big South Cape Island, off Stewart Island was invaded by ship rats. They were transferred to several small nearby muttonbirding islands, where an estimated 300 to 400 birds now live. The introduction of the

saddlebacks to Breaksea Island is an important stage in the department’s recovery plan which aims to build the population to 4,000 birds, distributed and breeding on widely located offshore islands. Norway rats were successfully eradicated from 170hectare Breaksea Island in 1988 to provide a sanctuary for saddlebacks and other endangered wildlife (see Forest & Bird February 1988). The South Island saddleback is an endemic wattlebird related to the rare North Island saddleback, endangered kokako and extinct huia. It was once common throughout the South and Stewart Islands but declined rapidly from predation by introduced rodents, cats and mustelids.