Last Chance to See

by Mark Carwardine

  We lost count of the number of times he rushed out of the bushes and tried to grab one of us by the leg.

  One day Ranger Chris saw me being mauled, or should I say ravished, and called over.

  ‘We need semen from him, to artificially inseminate one of the females, so if he tries to mate with you please can you collect some for us?’

  I think he was being serious. What was I supposed to collect the semen in, exactly? One of the pockets in my shorts? A boot? My cupped hands?

  Sirocco climbed up my leg, using his beak and claws like mountaineers use axes and crampons, then made his way up my back, and finally was rocking backwards and forwards on my head like a mentally retarded dachshund. His soft, musty-smelling feathers were rubbing against the back of my hair and his claws were digging into my neck.

  ‘Take one for the team!’ shouted Stephen, laughing hysterically from a safe distance away.

  But it really hurt. He ripped a mole off my head, pierced one of my ears and scratched my cheek. Stephen suddenly noticed blood running down the back of my neck and stopped laughing. He ran over, shouting for Sirocco to stop.

  Sirocco took no notice.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Stephen shouted to the camera team. ‘Stop filming! This is serious. He’s really getting hurt. Someone do something. Come on. Quickly.’

  It wasn’t so much a walk as a wade.

  Jo (Head of Kakapo Operations) heard the kerfuffle and leapt into action, pulling Sirocco off me by the scruff of his neck. She held him firmly on the ground, covered in her fleece and complaining loudly, while we made a dash for it: four grown men running away from an endangered parrot the size of a chicken.

  I had a cut on my arm, too. With hindsight, I wish I had done what the Maori do and rubbed ash into the wound. Then I would have a kakapo scar. How cool that would have been.

  Born on Codfish in 1997, the son of Zephyr and Felix, Sirocco was the smallest chick of his brood and partially hand-reared from the tender age of just three weeks. That, in a nutshell, was his problem. No one had actually explained to him that he was a kakapo.

  Named after the hot wind that comes off the desert in North Africa and blows across southern Europe (what else would you call a parrot living in New Zealand?), he was transferred to Maud Island – and that’s when all the trouble began.

  One day, when the rangers and volunteers were taking some much-needed time off, he watched them running and jumping off a wooden jetty into the sea. Hating to be left out, he ran along the jetty and jumped into the sea with them.

  That was the moment, as Sirocco calmly did a combination of breaststroke and doggy-paddle back to shore, that his astonished human carers discovered kakapo could swim.

  When he was first moved to Codfish, he was introduced to a lovely new home range, with wonderful views, on the other side of the island. It was perfect. Any normal kakapo would have been delighted. But Sirocco didn’t like it. He wanted to be with his human friends and kept walking all the way back to the rangers’ hut. Time after time, they would catch him and carry him the one-and-a-half-hour trek back to his home on the other side of the island. But by the time they got back, and had a cup of tea, he’d already be outside the hut waiting to greet them.

  Last year a TV crew wanted to film Sirocco. They built a special wooden hide to observe him, in the hope that he might behave more naturally if he couldn’t see them. They waited in their hide all afternoon and then for most of the night, yet there was no sign of him. They were just about to give up when they heard a slight rustling sound. There was Sirocco, in the corner of the hide, waiting patiently with them.

  Watching him from inside the safety of the hut was fun. He was a beautiful mottled green colour and full of life and bluster. We could see why he had his own page on Facebook (though, being a bird, he should really have been on Twitter – he could have rivalled Stephen and Barack Obama in the popularity stakes) and why he had an ever-increasing fan base worldwide. He was a lovable rogue – it was impossible not to fall for his innocent charm.

  Several weeks after we left Codfish, though, we heard that it was becoming increasingly difficult for the volunteers to go outside. So he was moved to a secret island hideaway, with a couple of other males for company, to keep him out of trouble.

  At least, that’s what everyone had hoped …

  The rangers and volunteers swore blind that it had been hot and dusty until the day before we arrived on Codfish, but it rained on and off for most of our stay.

  We explored the island on foot, partly because that’s the best way to experience its rich and beautiful diversity, but mainly because there was no alternative. There were no roads (not such a big issue given that there were no cars either) and even mountain bikes would have struggled through the rivers of mud.

  On the first day there was a torrential downpour and everywhere was flooded. Stephen didn’t fancy coming for a walk.

  ‘Come on, Stephen, you have to go outside in the rain to experience the real New Zealand,’ I cajoled.

  Kakapo: not quite wrapped up in cotton wool, but almost.

  ‘Ah, but you can only experience the real Stephen Fry by watching him stay indoors in the dry,’ was his considered reply.

  So I went with Ben, our director. The flimsy wooden boardwalk that weaved its way through the forest was under at least a metre (3 feet) of water. Imagine trying to tiptoe your way along a narrow tightrope in the dark and you’ll get the idea. It wasn’t so much a walk as a wade. And when we fell off the wooden planks (which was often – because they were invisible underwater) it wasn’t so much a wade as a swim.

  Strong currents almost swept our feet from under us, as creeks became streams and streams became fast-flowing rivers. There was thunder and lightning, too, which merely added to the mood of this wild and rugged island far from home.

  Against all the odds we found some kakapo droppings, which had a surprisingly sweet, herbal smell. As far as animal droppings go, they were quite pleasant (if you are that way inclined).

  We had hoped to find Jem, an eight-month-old chick that had wisely moved up to higher, drier ground in the deeper recesses of the forest. We did see a green blur dashing off into the undergrowth, which we thought might have been her, but then gave up and turned back.

  Later that afternoon the lake next to our hut had shrunk to a pond and Jo persuaded Stephen to venture outside.

  ‘It’s a nice forest, though, isn’t it?’ I said to him, as we slipped and slid our way deeper into the interior.

  ‘Yes, it is a nice forest. But why do we have to hike for three hours, when it was just as nice after three minutes? Let’s be brutally honest, when you’ve seen one muddy puddle and one dripping wet tree you’ve seen them all.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Because we’re looking for signs of kakapo,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but we always seem to be hiking our arses off. And walking uphill. And sleeping in huts, or tents. It seems to be an unrelenting theme in Last Chance to See. Are you absolutely sure there aren’t any endangered species that live in flat parts of the world near comfortable hotels?’

  A lot of the hiking was, admittedly, up and down steep hills. The rangers and volunteers were super fit. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they, after hiking with rucksacks stuffed full of equipment and kakapo food every day? We weren’t quite so fit. In fact, struggling to keep up, we quickly realised that we weren’t fit at all.

  ‘One day I’ll be in good shape,’ muttered Stephen under his breath.

  I huffed and puffed in knowing agreement.

  We hiked to the home range of a kakapo called Merty, named after Don Merton, on the east side of the island. We wanted to take a look at his track-and-bowl system, which was next to the base of a tree and overlooking a long, sweeping wooded valley.

  ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ said Stephen when we got there.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you say “kakapo booming in a bowl” it sounds like a euphemism for drug-taking.’<
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  Jo gave me a funny look and smiled to herself. Kneeling on the ground, she tenderly removed a couple of leaves from inside Merty’s bowl, like an affectionate wife picking a loose piece of cotton from her husband’s suit.

  Then she went to check a grey box that was fixed into the ground nearby.

  ‘This is a “Snark”,’ she explained, seeing our quizzical looks. ‘It’s named in honour of Lewis Carroll’s poem.’

  Stephen’s eyes lit up, as they inevitably did whenever anyone mentioned anything to do with literature. Immediately, he began to quote from Carroll’s longest poem (though what do I know? – I think it’s one of the longest, anyway). He was word-perfect, as always.

  He would have continued right to the end, if I hadn’t interrupted just as he got to ‘By a finger entwined in his hair’.

  ‘Why name a grey box after The Hunting of the Snark?’ I asked Jo.

  ‘Well, the poem is all about trying to find a mysterious, unlikely creature, isn’t it? And that’s exactly what we’re doing here. The Snark is an electronic box of tricks designed to monitor Merty’s comings and goings. It’s a data-logger that records the time he spends at his track-and-bowl system each night and how much time he spends with different females.’

  ‘How does it do that?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘Like all the kakapo on Codfish, he carries a radio transmitter on his back. It’s a bit like a child’s rucksack, with straps around the wings, except it is so small that it’s virtually invisible under his feathers. The transmitter sends messages to the Snark and we decipher the recordings to see what he’s been up to. It’s important to know that he is okay.’

  We checked the two tracks leading up to Merty’s bowl. Then we filled his feeding hopper with pellets, pouring out the rainwater first, and stood back to check we hadn’t missed anything.

  There was little else we could do, short of catching him and wrapping him up in cotton wool.

  We thought we’d just witnessed the ultimate in hands-on conservation. But little did we know.

  The highlight of the trip came on the very last day. We were sitting in the bunkhouse when we heard a message hiss and crackle over the field radio.

  We strained to hear and could just make it out: ‘Lisa is sitting on eggs! Repeat. Lisa is sitting on eggs!’

  Lisa was well known to all the rangers as the ‘early warning bird’. She was always the first kakapo to mate and, sure enough, several weeks ahead of all her contemporaries, she had already mated with a male called Basil.

  Rather romantically, their little rendezvous had taken place on Christmas night (nothing, but nothing, in the world of the kakapo is private).

  She’d mated with Basil the year before, too. Lisa liked Basil. But then so did all the other female kakapo – he was a strong and impressive boomer, the Elvis of the kakapo world, and considered a pretty good catch.

  Caught on the infrared camera – Lisa blinks innocently back from inside her nest hole.

  It was exciting news, because these were the very first eggs of the season. Everyone in the bunkhouse whooped and cheered with delight.

  We were given special permission to go and visit Lisa on the other side of the island. It meant another long, steep hike and I turned around to see Stephen’s face. But he was already tying his bootlaces, eager to go.

  We made it in record time and set up base camp about 50 metres (170 feet) from the nest.

  First, we had to put up a tent. I say ‘we’ but I was helping to prepare the high-tech nest-monitoring equipment and Stephen was busy watching Jo doing the actual putting up. He did do a bit of directing, shouting snippets of helpful advice, as he supported his elbow with one hand and his chin on the other.

  Stephen sat on a rock to recover, while Chris, Ness and I crept up to the nest to have a closer look. It was hidden inside a dark cavern under the tangled roots of a fallen tree.

  We took it in turns to peer inside, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds. One by one, we had to lie at a 45-degree angle and stick our heads inside the muddy main entrance with our feet sticking up into the sky. We emerged looking like coal miners at the face of a pit.

  It was my turn and I struggled to get into position, using an infrared camera to see inside without causing any unnecessary disturbance. There was Lisa, just a metre (3 feet) or so away, blinking innocently back. Her eyes lit up in the way human eyes light up when they are being filmed with infrared in the dark.

  I was staring at a wild kakapo sitting on the very first eggs of the season. I couldn’t believe it.

  Like surveyors checking a property for potential house-buyers, Chris and Ness did a thorough inspection of Lisa’s new home. There was lots of frowning, and pondering, and debating in hushed tones, but eventually they pronounced it fit for kakapo habitation.

  ‘What if it hadn’t been okay?’ I whispered.

  ‘Well, if there had been anything wrong,’ answered Ness, ‘we would have done some home improvements.’

  ‘Like building a new roof,’ added Chris, ‘or more flood-proof walls.’

  I watched as the two of them set up an infrared trip beam inside the nest cavity. They unravelled the cable, like a couple of bank robbers preparing to blow up a safe, all the way back to Stephen and the tent.

  At last, we could talk normally.

  The tent was for a couple of volunteers to camp out in the forest, where they could keep a watchful eye on Lisa and her valuable eggs each night. It looked a lot less cosy and waterproof than the nest.

  During the course of a typical breeding season, every single kakapo nest is observed and protected round the clock. Whenever the birds come or go, they break the infrared beam and a loud doorbell rings inside the tent and wakes up the willing volunteers inside.

  They have to get up in the dark and set to work on two main tasks before they can go back to bed.

  First, they have to keep watch for intruders, such as seabirds or wandering male kakapo, to stop them stumbling about in the nest and accidentally damaging the eggs.

  Second, they have to time the mother’s absence whenever she leaves the nest.

  If she is gone for too long they have to cover the eggs with a little electric blanket to keep them warm. This used to be made out of a whoopee cushion filled with wallpaper paste and heated by a battery-powered element, but nowadays it’s a little more high-tech.

  The volunteers have to sleep in the tent for about a month, until the eggs have hatched.

  Timing her absence once the hatchlings have emerged is just as important. Kakapo eat food which has a very low nutritional value and so they need large amounts to survive: a foraging trip, on foot, can often take several hours. But if a mother stays away for too long, the volunteers have to report her to the rangers. This requires another long stint in the tent: the chicks don’t fledge until they are about ten or eleven weeks old.

  Kakapo are excellent parents, but if food is scarce they make a habit of wandering off and leaving their eggs or chicks for far too long. Monitoring by volunteers enables early detection of this problem so that the eggs or chicks can be whisked away to the relative safety of an artificial incubator next to the bunkhouse.

  What we were witnessing was the ultimate in eleventh-hour micro-conservation. The kakapo is so endangered, so close to the edge, that caring for its population as a whole, in the traditional sense, is no longer an option. The only real hope for the last few survivors is round-the-clock individual care and attention.

  Whatever happens, the female kakapo are remarkably trusting and forgiving about all these intrusions. Perhaps they understand that everyone is there to help? Or perhaps it’s simply this: they’ll never learn to worry?

  Soon after leaving Codfish, I had a call from Ness with the almost unbelievable news that another ranger, Chris, had just caught a male kakapo, called Ranji, that had been missing for an astonishing 22 years. That made a grand total of 91.

  But there was more good news to come. The year 2009 proved to be a particularly bus
y and exciting one for everyone involved in kakapo conservation. It produced a bumper breeding season, with a record number of eggs and chicks.

  The population, at the time of writing, now stands at 124.

  Dear old Ralph, meanwhile, boomed heartily for the rest of the season.

  After a bumper breeding season, the kakapo population now stands at a more healthy 124… and counting.

  5

  POISONED DAGGER

  Our confusion over dates and time zones continued with a trip to Southeast Asia. Stephen flew from New York to London and on to Singapore, while I flew from San Francisco via Seoul. He had gained a day, I had lost a day, and somehow, as if we were travelling in weird parallel universes, we bumped into one another in a lift at the airport.

  We’d both had haircuts and developed dark rings under our eyes in the week since we were last together, in New Zealand. Or was it Madagascar? Or perhaps it was Kenya? We’d clearly been on the road far too long.

  ‘Sometimes I dream about staying at home, in my own time zone, and sleeping in my own bed,’ said Stephen. ‘Where are we going now? Oh God, don’t tell me. It’s Komodo, isn’t it?’

  It was. Komodo occupies a murky something-to-do-with-dragons place in most people’s minds. It’s a small island in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago, which stretches like a jewel necklace from the coast of Southeast Asia 4,800 kilometres (3,000 miles) into the Pacific Ocean. I hadn’t particularly enjoyed my first visit there, with Douglas Adams, and must have mentioned this to Stephen. I remembered it as a hot, dusty and rather unwelcoming place.

  ‘And we’re looking for a great, scaly, man-eating monster?’ he added almost to himself, clearly remembering my comments.

  We were.

  Making miniature great, scaly, man-eating monsters out of wood.

  Komodo – home to the largest and most dangerous lizard in the world (and to some of the most tolerant people).