Why is the kakapo important?

Singularities of kakapos:

• The ancient, flightless Kakapo is the world's rarest and strangest parrot, it only lives in New Zealand.
• It the only flightless and nocturnal parrot.
• It is, as well, the heaviest in the world, weighing up to 3.5 kilograms (8 lbs).

Here is a pic of an adult with two juvenile, obviously a family. You may notice how strange is to find a parrot raising their chicks in a kind of den in the ground.


Curiosities about the character of Kakapos:

The kakapo is one of the most outrageously funny, loving and strangest  birds in a land renowned for unusual creatures. Life moves very slowly  for the kakapo - it seems locked in another time.  It is slow to breed  and lives longer than any other bird. 

Why so many people in New Zealand cares about Kakapos:

• Because they tend to identificate their "identity" with the singularities of their nation, and the many singular species New Zealand has are, without doubt, part of the gross bulk of these singularity.
• Because New Zealand has already a sad history of loosing many singular species.

Why conserving kakapos has to do with conserving biodiversity in New Zealand:

It is a matter of conserving enough "wild" habitats for the kakapo to live in, or loosing the kakapo forever. We in Spain (and Portugal) have a very similar problem, we have our Iberian lynxes that are so madly endagered as a species. If we are not able to manage the enough territory in the conditions required for them to live in, we will only have them as a remaining captive individuals.

Why conserving kakapos is important for the rest of the world:
For two reasons:
- The people that will come after us.
- If we choose to forget endagered species, and continue growing and populate the Earth only with us and our pets and cattle, will get to a point where we won't be able to feed ourselves acording with this trend. We are just a piece of the domino that is further of the extinction point than is the kakapo today, but the falling of the rest of the pieces will reach us in a moment or other.
It is just time to think about this.

More about the kakapo:
New Zealand Ecology - Kakapo
The Fabulous Kakapo Parrot

More about extinctions in New Zealand:
List of extinct animals of New Zealand
Stephens Island wren

A vision of the extinction of the Stephen Island Wren, written by myself (Spanish):
El falso mito del gato del farero (1/3): El cuento, el pájaro y la isla