The incident occurred when members of New Zealand’s Deerstalkers’ Association were permitted to cull up to 600 pukeko birds – a highly aggressive bird that is said to pose a serious threat to other native species.
Advertisement
Baucke revealed that the conservation hunters were given guidelines on how to differentiate between pukeko and takahe.
However, when DOC staff examined the birds killed by the deerstalkers, they were horrified to find four takahe among the slain birds.
Volunteers who spent decades restoring Motutapu are devastated and angry that hunters mistakenly shot four of their takahe “friends” on the island.
Bill O’Leary, president of the Deerstalkers’ Association, told the New Zealand Herald: “I do know that the people involved in the group are very, very upset themselves”.
The cull of pukeko – a native swamphen that is found in vast numbers across the country – was organised because of the damage they cause to the nests and eggs of threatened species.
“There’s no way that they would send their treasured takahe to a sanctuary for it to be slaughtered”, said New Zealand MP Rino Tirakatene.
The takahe, of which there are only 300 left in the world, are twice the size.
The takahe on Motutapu had been translocated from the Fiordland National Park, where the only wild population of the birds is based.
Andrew Baucke says DOC has engaged local deerstalkers on two previous successful pukeko culling operations on the island in 2012 and 2013.
The bird has a distinctive red beak and petrol blue feathers Takahe are officially marked as a “critically endangered species” and have been subject to a conservation programme of considerable expense in the country for the last 11 years. They were also ordered to only shoot birds on the wing. Maud, Mana, Kapiti, Tiritiri Matangi and Motutapu islands (sanctuaries). The conservation department has since invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in rebuilding the population, with its public-private recovery program aiming to establish 125 breeding pairs by 2002.
Advertisement
“I apologise to the department and to the country at large”.
