Takahē may be flightless but their population is flying high with the official count reaching 418 after a record breeding season that produced an estimated 65 juveniles.

Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage said today that while the overall population number was good news, the number of breeding pairs was a more accurate indicator of population health. 

Breeding pair numbers have more than doubled in the past six years, from 66 in 2013 to 130 today. 

She said the number of takahē breeding pairs showed a good gender and age balance that was critical to keeping takahē away from extinction.

Fiordland's own Burwood Rearing Centre, near Te Anau, had also developed smart ways of preparing juvenile birds for successful release into the wild.

“Many of the offspring from pairs at sanctuary sites elsewhere in New Zealand are used to boost wild populations but need to learn several important skills first. At around five months old, they are transferred to the Burwood Takahe Centre in Southland and placed with foster takahē parents, who spend the winter and spring training their unnaturally large brood.”

She said these foster parents taught the juvenile takahē how to cope with heavy snow, feed on tussock, and locate and dig up the rhizomes of the hypolepis fern – a critical winter food source in Fiordland.

A landmark for the Takahē Recovery Programme was the 2018 release of takahe into Kahurangi National Park’s Heaphy Track area to attempt to establish a second wild population beyond that of Fiordland's Murchison Mountains. 

That Kahurangi population has grown and now has 31 birds. 

Ms Sage said almost all of the takahē there had been gaining weight since their release. The release of another 10 takahe there was planned for early next year.

About two-thirds of the takahē population is spread across 18 secure island and mainland sanctuaries. This is a safeguard for the species should some disaster threaten the wild populations but the sanctuary sites have limited available habitat.

As takahē numbers rise, the challenge is to identify more suitable sites with low predator numbers to establish more wild populations in the bird’s natural South Island tussock lands home.

Takahē had been considered extinct until two were famously rediscovered by Dr Geoffrey Orbell in Fiordland’s Murchison Mountains in 1948.

The Takahē Recovery Programme has been running for more than 30 years and is the longest-running species conservation programme in New Zealand. It has pioneered many techniques that have gone on to guide conservation efforts for other species.