ÑA few days later, standing on top of Kakapo Castle in Fiordland we tell Don Merton that we think we've been forgiven.
'Oh yes, I think so,' he says. 'You may have bumbled around a bit and trodden on a few toes, but you've actually stirred things up a bit as well.
Ñ'The press conference was very effective, and from what I hear there's an imminent decision coming from quite high up to move the kakapo conservation programme to the top of the Department's priority list, which should mean that we get allocated more resources. I just hope it's not all too late.
Ñ 'There are now twenty five kakapos on Codfish, but only five of those are females, and that's the crucial point. There's only one kakapo that we know of left on Stewart Island, and that's a male. We keep searching for more females, but we doubt if there are any any more. Add those to the fourteen birds on Little Barrier and we have a total of only forty kakapos left altogether.
Ñ 'And it's so difficult getting the blighters to breed. In the past they bred very slowly because there was nothing else to keep their population stable. If an animal population rises so fast that it outgrows the capacity of its habitat to feed and sustain it then it plunges right back down again, then back up, back down and so on.
ÑIf a population fluctuates too wildly it doesn't take much of a disaster to tip the species over the edge into extinction. So all the kakapo's peculiar mating habits are just a survival technique as much as anything else. But only because there was no outside competition. Now that they are surrounded by predators there's very little to keep them alive, other than our direct intervention. As long as we can sustain it.'
Ñ This reminds me of my motorbike industry analogy, which I have tactfully kept to myself. There are remedies available to motorbike engineers that zoologists do not have. As we tread our way carefully back along the ridge to the helicopter I ask Don what he feels the long term prospects for the kakapos really are, and his answer is surprisingly apposite.
Ñ 'Well,' he says in his quiet polite voice, 'anything's possible, and with genetic engineering, who knows. If we can keep them going during our lifespan, it's over to the next generation with their new range of tools and techniques and science to take it from there.
Ñ'All we can do is perpetuate them during our lifetime and try to hand them on in as good a condition as possible to the next generation and hope like heck that they feel the same way about them as we do.'
Ñ A few minutes later our helicopter rises up above Kakapo Castle, puts its nose down and heads back up the valleys to Milford Sound, leaving behind a small scratched depression in the earth and single, elderly, untouched sweet potato.
