The trouble is that this predator business has all happened rather suddenly in New Zealand, and by the time nature starts to select in favour of slightly more nervous and fleet-footed kakapos, there won’t be any left at all, unless deliberate human intervention can protect them from what they can’t deal with themselves. It would help if there were plenty of them being born, but this brings us on to more problems. The kakapo is a solitary creature: it doesn’t like other animals. It doesn’t even like the company of other kakapos. One conservation worker we met said he sometimes wondered if the
...more
