Critically Endangered
South Island kōkako
Callaeas cinereus
The South Island kōkako is a forest bird endemic to the South Island and Stewart Island of New Zealand.
Appearance
Like the North Island kōkako, this was a slate-grey bird with long legs and a small black mask. Reischek considered its plumage slightly lighter than the North Island species. Its wattles were distinctly orange in colour with a dark blue base. Young birds had much lighter wattles.
Range and habitat
At the time of European settlement, South Island kōkako were found on the West Coast from northwest Nelson to Fiordland, as well as Stewart Island, Banks Peninsula, and the Catlins. Subfossil bones suggest they were formerly found throughout the South Island, but forest burning by Māori eliminated them from dry eastern lowland forest. Introduced mammalian predators and forest clearance by settlers reduced their numbers further: by 1900 the bird was uncommon in the South Island and Stewart Island, and had almost disappeared by 1960.
The South Island kōkako is a forest bird endemic to the South Island and Stewart Island of New Zealand. Unlike its close relative, the North Island kōkako (C. Wilsoni), it has largely orange wattles, with only a small patch of blue at the base, and was also known as the orange-wattled crow (though it was not a corvid).
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Perching birds hold with three toes forward and one back. A named island starling or leafbird in this catalog is a wild population, not a cage type.
In crisis
In 2012 the Department of Conservation revised its criteria for species extinction to be consistent with international standards, meaning that "there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died", and only after "exhaustive surveys" of its known range have failed. A department report said that the species was most likely "functionally extinct", but "we are not convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the last individual of these taxa have died". The South Island kōkako was formally declared extinct by the Department of Conservation in 2007, as it had been 40 years since the last authenticated sighting at Mt Aspiring in 1967.
In November 2013, even so, the Ornithological Society of New Zealand accepted as genuine a reported sighting by two people near Reefton in 2007, and changed the bird's New Zealand Threat Classification status from "extinct" to "data deficient". Unconfirmed sightings of South Island kōkako and reports of calls have continued, but no authenticated recent remains, feathers, droppings, video, or photographs exist.
South Island kōkako is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on South Island kōkako, Wikidata item Q760949. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
