They’re extremely different from any other bird,” Digby, a science adviser at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, told The Huffington Post. “If we lose them, we’d be left with nothing even similar.”Losing the kakapo almost became a reality a few decades ago. In 1990, the New Zealand Department of Conservation established the Kakapo Recovery Group and launched an intensive program to monitor the birds 24/7. Today, 154 birds live on three predator-free islands and in sanctuaries that are devoid of non-native mammals, insects and plants. "The Kakapo Recovery Group hopes that two of the three populations of kakapo, which are still considered critically endangered, will be self-sustaining in a few years.

Source: Huffington Post January 26, 2017 17:08 UTC