Holocene extinction may have put some pressure on other birds but at the time of early European contact (18th Century) and colonisation (19th Century) the bird life was prolific. With them, the Europeans brought ship rats, possums, cats and mustelids which decimated native bird life, some of which had adapted flightlessness and ground nesting habits and others had no defensive behavior as a result of having no extant endemic mammalian predators. The kakapo, the world's biggest parrot, which is flightless, now only exists in managed breeding sanctuaries. New Zealand's national emblem, the kiwi, is on the endangered bird list. There has been
Kakapo Fiordland as a nature reserve. In 1894, the government appointed Richard Henry as caretaker. A keen naturalist, Henry was aware that native birds were declining, and began catching and moving kakapo and kiwi from the mainland to the predator-free Resolution Island. In six years, he moved more than 200 kakapo to Resolution Island. By 1900, however, stoats had swum to Resolution Island and colonised it; they wiped out the nascent kakapo population within 6 years. In 1903, three kakapo were moved from Resolution Island to the nature reserve of Little Barrier Island (Hauturu-o-Toi) north-east of Auckland, but feral cats were