Bird conservation into areas with native wild birds. Translocations involve moving populations of threatened species into areas of suitable habitat currently unused by the species. There are several reasons for doing this; the creation of secondary populations that act as an insurance against disaster, or in many cases threats faced by the original population in its current location. One famous translocation was of the kakapo of New Zealand. These large flightless parrots were unable to cope with introduced predators in their remaining habitat on Stewart Island, so were moved to smaller offshore islands that had been cleared of predators. From there a
Kakapo of the birds had died and the fifth died after about four years. In the next 12 years, regular expeditions found few signs of the kakapo, indicating that numbers were continuing to decline. Only one bird was captured in 1967; it died the following year. By the early 1970s, it was uncertain whether the kakapo was still an extant species. At the end of 1974, scientists located several more male kakapo and made the first scientific observations of kakapo booming. These observations led Don Merton to speculate for the first time that the kakapo had a lek breeding system. From