Zealandia welcomes senior takahē Autahi and Hopi into retirement, lifting the Wellington sanctuary’s flock to five

A pair of senior takahē have made the long journey from Fiordland to the capital, settling into what Zealandia is calling a peaceful retirement at the fenced sanctuary above Karori. The birds, Autahi and Hopi, arrived in Wellington on Wednesday morning after weeks of delay, lifting the urban ecosanctuary’s wild takahē population to five.

Autahi is 13 years old. Hopi is 16. Both have spent their entire breeding lives at the Department of Conservation’s Burwood Takahē Centre near Te Anau, the South Island facility that has anchored the species’ recovery for the past four decades. With the pair now considered past their most productive breeding years, conservation managers have moved them to Wellington so they can live out their remaining time in a smaller, lower-pressure environment.

According to RNZ, the birds were captured at Burwood, driven over the Devil’s Staircase to Queenstown and then flown direct to Wellington. The transfer had been scheduled for April but was postponed when heavy rain and flooding closed roads and disrupted air travel across the lower North Island.

Jo Ledington, Zealandia’s general manager of conservation and restoration, said the trip went smoothly once the weather cleared. “They were captured at Burwood near Te Anau, and they’ll be driven up to Queenstown, and then a direct flight to Wellington,” she told reporters before the move.

Takahē are one of the country’s great conservation comeback stories. Once thought extinct, the heavy flightless rail was famously rediscovered in 1948 in the Murchison Mountains by Geoffrey Orbell, half a century after the species had last been recorded by science. Today there are only around 520 takahē remaining nationally, split between the small wild Murchison population, secure offshore islands such as Motutapu and Tiritiri Matangi, fenced mainland sanctuaries like Zealandia, and the Burwood breeding centre that quietly supplies birds to all of them.

Zealandia chief executive Dr Danielle Shanahan said the arrival of Autahi and Hopi was a reminder of how stubborn the species’ recovery has been. “Takahē are such an incredible example of why we should never give up when it comes to nature. A small population of the species was rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in the 1940s, 50 years after being declared extinct,” she said.

The new arrivals join Waitaa and Bendigo, a younger pair who have lived at Zealandia for several years and had long been presumed infertile. The pair surprised staff in 2025 when they produced a healthy chick that survived through winter, the first takahē to hatch and fledge inside the Wellington fence.

Because takahē are intensely territorial birds, Autahi and Hopi will be kept in a separate enclosure from Waitaa and Bendigo while staff work out how, or whether, the four adults can eventually share the sanctuary’s grasslands. That means visitors are unlikely to spot the new birds for the next few weeks. Zealandia has asked the public to be patient, noting that Waitaa and Bendigo can still often be seen on the lower wetland tracks in the meantime.

Autahi and Hopi were welcomed onto the whenua with a mihi whakatau attended by representatives of Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika and Ngāti Toa Rangatira, the mana whenua of the Wellington area, alongside members of Ngāi Tahu, whose rohe encompasses the takahē’s wild Fiordland home. The careful transfer protocol between South Island and North Island iwi groups is part of the kawa DOC follows whenever a treasured taonga species is moved out of its ancestral range.

The Burwood Takahē Centre, which sits on a tussock-covered terrace just north of Te Anau, is the engine room of the national programme. Each summer DOC rangers move breeding pairs into individual pens, manage their feed and weigh chicks at intervals to track growth. Surplus birds are then released into the Murchison Mountains, on to predator-free islands such as Motutapu, Tiritiri Matangi, Mana and Kāpiti, or into mainland sanctuaries like Zealandia and Tāwharanui. Older birds whose breeding output has slowed are increasingly being placed in low-density retirement spots, freeing Burwood’s pens for the most productive pairs.

Zealandia’s wider takahē story has already had its share of sadness. The sanctuary previously lost two birds to natural causes and its first chick in 2017 did not survive its first year. Bendigo and Waitaa, on paper, were not expected to add to the population at all. Their 2025 chick changed the maths and gave the team confidence that even older or supposedly infertile pairs can still contribute when given the right environment.

For the wider public, the pair’s arrival is a small but cheering reminder that the takahē story is still being written. With only 520 birds in existence the species remains acutely vulnerable to disease outbreaks, predator incursions and storm-driven food shortages, and every individual matters. Autahi and Hopi will not produce more chicks, but their presence at Zealandia frees up valuable space at Burwood and keeps two more birds in a predator-free environment for as long as they live, while giving Wellingtonians a closer look at one of the rarest creatures on the planet.

Have you visited Zealandia and spotted Waitaa or Bendigo on the lower tracks, or do you have a favourite takahē sighting from one of the offshore island sanctuaries? Drop your thoughts and stories in the comments below.