Hon Maggie Barry

Minister of Conservation
5 July 2016

EMBARGOED UNTIL 4.30pm

New partnership supports takahē recovery

A newly-signed partnership between DOC and Fulton Hogan will help the critically-endangered takahē continue its recovery, Conservation Minister Maggie Barry says.

Worth $1 million, the partnership was signed at the Burwood Takahē Centre near Te Anau today by DOC director-general Lou Sanson and Fulton Hogan’s director of investments, Bob Fulton.

“The Takahē Recovery Programme has just had its most successful breeding season on record, with 38 chicks fledged,” Ms Barry says.

“Consistently high numbers of chicks are being produced each year, thanks to the hard work of DOC staff, volunteers and our Treaty partner, Ngai Tahu. Fulton Hogan will support the next step in the species’ recovery.”

Recovery efforts have focused on increasing the takahē population living on pest-free islands, in fenced sanctuaries and in the Murchison Mountains of Fiordland, the only place it can be found in the wild.

“The next step is to re-establish wild populations in the takahē’s natural home, the South Island’s high tussock lands, and DOC has already begun searching for suitable sites,” Ms Barry says.

Takahē recovery has previously received more than a decade of support from Mitre 10, who will maintain an ongoing involvement as the programme’s official supplier, making an annual donation of materials.

Believed to be extinct until a small population was found living in the Murchison Mountains in 1948, the takahē remains one of New Zealand’s most endangered species.

Flightless and ground-nesting, it is extremely vulnerable to predation by introduced mammals.

For more information on the Takahē Recovery Programme visithttp://takaherecovery.org.nz/

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