Deidre Vercoe: Department of Conservation Kakapo Recovery Manager on breeding season starting

Conservationists are expecting a lot of breeding action from threatened kakapo over the next month.  

The nocturnal, flightless parrots reproduce in tune with rimu, which have a mast season of extra growth every three or four years. 

The Department of Conservation says there are 83 breeding-aged females this season, up from 55. 

Kakapo Recovery Manager Deidre Vercoe told Andrew Dickens this year's mast is looking great. 

She says this is when there is more fruit on the tree, and this year they have the most in 28 years. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now, have you ever caught yourself thinking recently, what's going
on with that crazy cacoppo bird? Well, if you must know,
the cucka Paul right now are getting busy because it's
the first breeding season for the parrot in four long years,
and Doc is expecting a whole load of breeding over
the next month. A Department of Conservation manager for Cucko

(00:37):
Paul Recovery at our resident professional Cukapaul expert is Deirdre Vico,
who joins in our commodity.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Deardre, Good morning injury.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Now, come on a breeding season once every four years.
No wonder they're going extinct.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Yeah, that's what people say, but they are perfectly entering
with your environment. I've been waiting for three to four
years for the remoo tree to mask, to produce enough
fruit for them to grow chick. So they've got the
timing right.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
So they're tied to the remove and when you say mass,
that's when it releases all the pollen and all that
sort of stuff, and there's food are plenty.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, that's when there's heaps of fruit on the trees
and this year we've got the biggest remove crops that
we've ever seen in twenty eight years, so it should
be a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So the birds get busy over the next month, and
then how many chicks can we make?

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh, it's so hard to know, but what I can
say is that we've got eighty three breeding aged females.
In the last breeding season we had fifty five, so
we've got quite a few more now that have come
of age. And most years we'll get an average of
one chick per breeding aged female. So fingers crossed that
we have a good year.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
How do you track we're mating begins?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, all of the Kharkopool we're a pretty smart transmitter
and that's transmitting their activity information. So we've got a
remote monitoring system set up on the islands where they live,
and every night their activity is transmitted via some hubs
around the islands, but like a data blogger, and that
links to our computers in the morning, so we get
a readout who's mated and who worth and at what

(02:11):
time and for how long, and then we can see
when the females start nesting as well. Because their activity
drops as they settle into incubation mode. So it's all
pretty clear on the remote monitoring, and yeah, it's very exciting.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
So your job is just watching to see when caca
pos get busy.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, things have changed. Ten twenty years ago. We used
to have to go up to the track and bowl
systems where the males boom from. So they dig these
beautiful bowls in the earth and all these tracks meticulously
groomed on the way into the bowls, and that's where
the females go and they'll mate. So we used to
go to these track and bowl systems around the island
and look physically looks the mating sign which is kind

(02:52):
of feathered from the female's chest pressed into the into
the ground. But yet these days we just wake up
and switch on the computer and we get to get
an instant report.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
You just painted a visual image that I really did
not need this morning about Bember. Just one find a question.
How many more birds do we need?

Speaker 3 (03:12):
We need plenty. The population's two hundred and thirty six,
so we've come a long way. When we started the program,
we had fifty one birds. That was it, and so
that was nineteen ninety so We're making slow, good progress,
but you know, two hundred and thirty six are still
such a small number. They're still critically endangered. So that's
why this breeding season is so important.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Did we Vico I thank you so much for your
time today. It's pretty we didn't have any very white
to play to inspire the Kakapo to get even busier.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
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