Critically endangered black stilts
THE black stilt, once our most common stilt, is now listed as ‘‘critically endangered’’, and is confined to the Mackenzie Country. It inhabits braided rivers and related wetlands, especially shallow streams and pools rich in native invertebrates. The feathers and bill of adult black stilts are entirely black, the back and wings having a distinctive greenish sheen. The legs are red. The black stilt
(Himantopus novaezelandiae), kaki, nests on dry shingle and closeby swamps. Both sexes incubate.
Habitat change and introduced predators have proved lethal to the black stilt. It was formerly abundant throughout New Zealand, but declined steeply in the 19th century. By 1900, although absent from the North Island, the black stilt was still present throughout the South Island, but its range contracted to Canterbury and Otago in the 1950s. By 1980, it was confined to the Mackenzie Basin, with breeding pairs only in the area between Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki south to the Ahuriri River.
Black stilts once fed from an abundant and highly unusual association of aquatic insects in the Blue Stream, near the terminal moraine of the Tasman Glacier near Mount Cook, but this whole habitat and its unique community suddenly ceased to exist in 1994, as described in this column last week.
Today, less than 200 adult black stilts exist. A recent count of adult black stilts in the wild numbered 132 birds. To these, a further 45 young birds released from a captive breeding programme were added a short time ago.
Wholescale modification of the Mackenzie Country by unsustainable new rampedup intensive factory dairy farming is destroying not only the iconic and wildly beautiful blue and gold scenery, but also the unique and remarkable lizards, birds and insects found nowhere
else.
The black stilt is one of the rare and endangered native species found by Lake Pukaki, now further threatened by proposed factory dairying on the splendid final approach to
Mount Cook.