The world’s rarest parrot is suddenly back in the spotlight for the best possible reason: after a four year lull, New Zealand’s kākāpō are laying eggs again and launching a fresh breeding season that conservationists once thought might never come. The comeback is fragile and heavily managed, but it shows how decades of intensive work can pull a species back from the edge of silence.
I see this new burst of nesting as more than a feel good wildlife story. It is a live test of whether humans can repair the damage we created, using science, Indigenous partnership and sheer persistence to give a critically endangered bird a second chance.
The world’s rarest, fattest, flightless parrot
The kākāpō is an evolutionary outlier, a nocturnal, flightless parrot that evolved in isolation in New Zealand and now survives only through hands on care. It is often described as the world’s rarest parrot, and recent coverage has stressed that there are just 236 individuals alive, a figure that underlines how close the species still sits to oblivion. Another report notes that by 2022 the population had climbed to 252, before disease and other pressures killed 16 birds over the past four years, a reminder that every individual matters.
These parrots are also famous for their physique and personality, sometimes dubbed the world’s fattest parrots because they store energy to survive lean years and long lives. They are endemic to New Zealand, and earlier accounts of their history describe how, in the 1970s, it was feared that the species had vanished entirely in the wild before a tiny remnant was found and moved to predator free islands. That long arc of decline and rescue sits behind the recent social media burst celebrating that the world’s rarest parrot has laid eggs again, with one widely shared clip highlighting the kākāpō as “The World’s rarest parrot, the Kākāpō, has laid eggs for the first time in 4 years” and stressing that it is endemic to New Zealand.
A long awaited breeding season finally begins
After four years without nesting, the new breeding season marks a turning point. Conservation managers announced that the first kākāpō breeding season in four years is officially underway, describing it as an Introduction to a critical window in the species’ recovery. The Department of Conservation, often shortened to DOC, and the iwi partner Ngāi Tahu framed the season as a chance to build on earlier gains, but also cautioned that success cannot be measured by numbers alone, because genetic diversity and chick survival will determine whether the population can withstand future shocks.
In the lead up to this moment, the Kākāpō Recovery team had been “Counting down to the kākāpō breeding season” and stressing that, after a four year wait, they were thrilled that breeding would return. Their planning notes explain that they expect some kākāpō will not breed at all, while others may lay eggs that fail, and they are preparing for a range of outcomes as they encourage as many females as possible to nest in 2026. That cautious optimism is captured in the way the group describes itself as a Recovery effort rather than a finished success story.
Rimu fruit, radio backpacks and round the clock care
The timing of this breeding burst is not an accident. Kākāpō rely on heavy crops of native rimu fruit to trigger mating, and this year New Zealand’s forests have delivered a bumper harvest that gives the birds a rare abundance of food. One detailed account describes how kākāpō have been offered a lifeline by this rimu mast, with conservation staff predicting a “mating bonanza” as the birds respond to the feast and warning that, without such years, the species risks falling silent forever. The same report notes that these are the world’s fattest parrots, and that the rimu crop in New Zealand has arrived just in time to support a new wave of nesting for the World’s rarest parrot.
Technology and human labour are doing the rest. All of the adult birds wear backpack radio transmitters so rangers can track their movements and respond quickly if a nesting female is in trouble. One report explains that All of the kākāpō are monitored this way, and that intensive management has raised the population from a few dozen birds to the current total. Most kākāpō females raise one chick each breeding season, and staff sometimes step in to hand rear extra chicks or swap eggs between nests to give weaker birds a better chance, a level of intervention that would be unthinkable for most wild species but is now routine for this one.
From near extinction to cautious resurgence
The scale of the turnaround becomes clearer when I look back at how close the species came to disappearing. Earlier accounts describe how, by the late twentieth century, introduced predators and habitat loss had pushed kākāpō to the brink, with only a handful of males left on the mainland and a few undiscovered birds clinging on in remote Fiordland and on offshore islands. When those survivors were finally found, they were moved to predator free sanctuaries and placed under the care of what would become the modern recovery programme, a move that set the stage for the current breeding season but did not guarantee it.
Even now, the numbers are small enough that a single bad year can erase years of gains. One report from Wellington notes that New Zealand’s rare flightless parrot has begun breeding again, but stresses that the species remains critically endangered and that every nesting attempt is vital. The same dispatch from Wellington highlights that this is only the thirteenth mating season in the past thirty years, a statistic that underlines how infrequently the birds get a chance to reproduce. When I weigh that against the recent figure of 16 deaths in four years, it is clear that the margin for error remains painfully thin.
Partnership, public attention and what comes next
For me, one of the most striking aspects of this story is how it blends Indigenous leadership, government science and public enthusiasm. The breeding season was flagged in advance on social media, with a post in Nov explaining that kākāpō breeding season is underway and celebrating that, Together with its treaty partner, the programme is working to protect Aotearoa’s nocturnal parrots. That message, which explicitly referenced Aotearoa and the shared responsibility for its wildlife, signalled that Ngāi Tahu are not just stakeholders but co architects of the recovery strategy.
Public fascination is helping to keep the pressure on politicians and agencies to fund that strategy over the long haul. Short clips celebrating that the world’s rarest parrot has laid eggs for the first time in four years have reached audiences far beyond New Zealand, turning obscure details like rimu mast years and transmitter backpacks into talking points. At the same time, official updates from DOC, framed as an Introduction to the season, and the careful language from the Kākāpō Recovery team about Counting down and planning for failure as well as success, remind me that this is still an experiment in how far human stewardship can go. If the current nesting burst produces a healthy crop of chicks, it will not mean the job is finished, but it will prove that, with patience and partnership, even the rarest parrot on Earth can step back from the brink.
More from Morning Overview