New Zealand’s Kākāpō Enjoy Their Best Breeding Season on Record

The kākāpō is a bird unlike any other: a plump, moss-green, nocturnal parrot that cannot fly, can live for decades, and breeds only occasionally, when the forest provides. Once found across New Zealand, it was driven to the edge of extinction by introduced predators, and by 1995 just 51 birds remained. That every kākāpō alive today can be traced to such a tiny founding group makes the news from the 2026 breeding season all the more remarkable: it was the best on record.

More than 100 chicks hatched during the season, comfortably surpassing the previous record of 85 set in 2019. The breeding was concentrated among 78 nesting females spread across three predator-free island sanctuaries, including Pukenui / Anchor Island and Whenua Hou / Codfish Island in and around Fiordland. Ahead of the season, the total kākāpō population stood at 235 — a number that, thanks to this bumper crop of chicks, is now poised to grow substantially once the young birds are formally counted.

“Once found across New Zealand, it was driven to the edge of extinction by introduced predators, and by 1995 just 51 birds remained.”

Kākāpō breeding is famously unpredictable because it is tied to the “masting” of the native rīmu tree, which produces a heavy crop of fruit only every few years. The 2026 season rode on the back of a bumper rīmu berry crop across the southern islands, giving females the abundant food they need to nest and raise young. Because mast years occur irregularly, conservationists cannot simply schedule these baby booms — they must be ready to seize them when nature obliges.

Not every chick will survive; a handful died during the season and several were treated at the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital, and official counts are only finalized once chicks reach 150 days old. The recovery is a joint effort between New Zealand’s Department of Conservation and iwi with deep cultural ties to the bird. For Ngāi Tahu, kākāpō are a taonga — a treasure — and Whenua Hou holds special significance. Each new chick is a step further from the brink for a parrot that, not so long ago, the world nearly lost forever.