Basil the kākāpō is a survivor. When kākāpō were rediscovered on Stewart Island in 1977, in the Tin Range on the southern end of the island, the population was initially estimated to be between 100 and 200 birds. Most of these birds were found between the Pegasus River and an area known as Skyline, roughly halfway from the Robertson River to Seal Creek, largely in subalpine scrublands. They were divided into two arenas where male kākāpō boomed for females. However, several kilometres to the sout

How long does a kākāpō live? The honest answer is: we still don’t know. Kākāpō are among the world’s longest-lived birds, and several individuals alive today were already adults when researchers first began banding and monitoring the species in the 1970s. Because of that, no kākāpō of known age has reached the end of its natural lifespan yet. What we can say, based on what we’ve observed so far, is that some living birds are well over 50 years old, and that’s only the minimum we can confirm. Ini