Ms Mackenzie
Blogger: Campaign Manager for the Black Stilt and Painter, Grahame Sydney
The kaki, Photo: D Vietch
Have you ever seen one?
Probably not……. very few New Zealanders have. Black Stilts ( “kaki”) are the world’s rarest wading bird, and just 30 years ago were perilously close to total extinction. Seeing one is a rare experience.
And when you do, it’ll remind you of several things.
First of all, the kaki looks for all the world like a thin, elegant, catwalk fashion model – all fine, fire-engine red legs and tight, shiney black jacket. Sharp, sophisticated, delicate and remote. The Next Top Model ? It’s a big “YES” from me !
Seeing one will also remind you of how intelligent they must be, for their last, chosen place of residence is the McKenzie Basin : these birds are the mythic “Good on yer, mate” Southern Man of the avian world, and just as hard to find.
Speaking of which, Black Stilts mate for life. Admirable stuff ( not like their more promiscuous and proliferating “pied” cousins.)
But you might also be reminded of less admirable elements in the kaki story : how there were once thousands of them, spread all over New Zealand, thriving on our stoney, naturally clean braided river beds.
With human occupation came predators – rats, stoats, ferrets – and, later, radical changes to those waterways as men dammed rivers, drained aquifers and polluted the mountain streams with fertilisers and effluent.
The impacts were catastrophic. By 1981 only 23 adult birds remained.
The Black Stilt story is a mirror of so much of present day New Zealand environmental use and abuse: a beautiful indigenous bird, pushed to the very edge of extinction’s abyss by human thoughtlessness or greed.
Now being nurtured back from that eradication by a dedicated captive breeding plan in Twizel, the Kaki Recovery Programme, there is cause for optimism.
The Black Stilt, thankfully, is still in the running. It went so close to being sent home…….
VOTE KAKI, the BLACK STILT !!!
To vote in Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year poll, go here – www.forestandbird.org.nz/poll
