This month naturalists, ornithologists and conservationists are celebrating the rediscovery of the takahē 75 years ago in Fiordland.

Holding a special cultural, spiritual and traditional significance to Ngāi Tahu, the South Island takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri) is New Zealand’s largest (2-4kg) surviving flightless bird and the world’s biggest living rail species. It's North Island cousin (moho; P. mantelli) is however extinct.

Invercargill doctor Geoffrey Orbell's successful discovery of three birds in Fiordland's Murchison Mountains on 20th November 1948, debunked the general assumption of the time that the bird was extinct.

First evidence of the takahē's existence by a European came in 1847 when Superintendent and naturalist Walter Mantell uncovered bone remnants in Taranaki.

This was followed two years later by a group of Dusky Bay sealers, who chased down and eventually ate what turned out to be the first recorded European encounter with a live takahē.

Mantell successfully found and mounted the unlucky Dusky bird's remains. He later received another takahē skin from Maori on Secretary Island. Both examples ended up in the British Museum.

In 1879 a third takahē' was reportedly mauled by a rabbiter's dog on the eastern side of Lake Te Anau, while a fourth bird, caught in 1898 by a dog named Rough in Lake Te Anau's Middle Arm, ended its days as an Otago Museum exhibit.

While tales of "giant pukaki and goose-size birds" persisted from hunters and surveyors, no physical birds were ever brought forward leading to the assumption that takahē' must now be extinct.

However while on a hunting trip in April 1948 Orbell heard unusual sounds, as if someone was whistling across the top of an empty .303 casing. This along with distinctive bird footprints found in sand, convinced Orbell he had found something.

Later that same year Orbell, accompanied by friends Rex Watson, Neil McCrostie and Joan Telfer, finally recorded the takahē's existence on film which led to the group making world headlines and become the toast of the ornithological community.

Being aware that the flightless bird was barely hanging on in the wild, the government authorised a Wairarapa famer and amateur ornithologist, Elwyn Welch, to establish a captive takahē breeding programme.

While Welch was passionate about birds and an expert in raising endangered species, public opposition to the North Island transfer necessitated the wild egg retrieval be conducted in secret.

Codenamed 'Operation Password', the November 1957 move involved Welch, his Austin A40 car, boxes and brooding bantams - to keep any removed takahē eggs safe.

While the operation was ultimately unsuccessful , a second transfer in 1959 - again using bantams, was successful and resulted in the world's first artificially hatched takahē, and led to permission being given for the first transfer of live takahē to Welch's farm.

In 1985 the specialist Burwood Takahē Centre was created and allowed for wild eggs to be artificially incubated.

From 2018 maturing birds graduating from the Burwood Centre were established in other sanctuaries including Kahurangi National Park, and four predator free islands (Te Hoiere, Mana, Kapiti and Tiritiri Matangi).

The strategic placements proved invaluable, when in 2007 a stoat plague decimated the Fiordland wild population by 50% before eventually recovering nine years later.

Today 18 mainland and island sanctuaries now exist across the length of the country, and hold a takahē population that has almost reached 500 (Oct 2023).

On 23rd August this year, 18 takahē were released into the Whakatipu's Greenstone Valley in an attempt to establish a third wild population, which will compliment Aotearoa's other wild takahē populations in the Murchison Mountains and Nelson's Kahurangi National Park.