Forget the Kardashians. For nearly a decade, the only ‘famous families’ researchers Jörn Theuerkauf and Henri Bloc have been obsessed with are the 15 families of birds they’re carefully tracking through a sanctuary in New Caledonia as they track their conservation efforts.
The birds in question are kagus — also known as cagous — flamboyant, blueish-gray birds that can only be found on that particular island country in the South Pacific.
The kagu is peculiar for a number of reasons. It can fly, but it’s regarded as “nearly flightless.” It primarily toddles around on the ground, but it does extend its wings and flips up its trademark “mohawk” crest for mating displays.
They also bark like a dog — a sound more akin to a Yorkie “yap” than a Rottweiler “woof” — and partake in morning duets, or as one zoologist noted, “screaming challenges.”
Considered one of the most unique birds in the world, kagus have been beloved by the Indigenous Kanak tribes of New Caledonia for countless years.
Unfortunately, after Europeans colonized the island in 1853 at the behest of Emperor Napoleon III, the kagu was no longer worshiped. Over the next century, they were trapped, domesticated, and forced to contend with a flurry of invasive animals brought on to the island by colonizers, including pigs, rats, dogs, and cats.
Today, kagus are still under grave threat from these predators. For years, rats and pigs have continued raiding and decimating kagu nests, while stray cats and dogs prey on the birds themselves.
“These invasive mammals nearly caused the outright extinction of the species in 2017,” wildlife rehabilitation specialist Tim Mihocik wrote for The Revelator, “when two stray dogs entered the Parc des Grandes Fougeres wildlife refuge of New Caledonia and went on an unparalleled killing spree.”
Theuerkauf and Bloc were there on that horrific day, when they found 30 kagus dead in the sanctuary. In 2020, a similar event caused a ban of dogs — even those on leashes — from entering the park, and a program was implemented to curb the stray dog population, which had grown wildly out of control.
But Theuerkauf and Bloc’s conservation work — through the Nature Warden brigade — has not been in vain.
As national concern for the kagus has grown, the team has consistently spent a decade recording the bird’s behaviors, setting up trail cameras by nests, and tracking their recovery.
And the researchers have been blown away by their progress.
“The population has probably tripled since 2017,” Theuerkauf told The Guardian. “We are therefore soon at the maximum number of birds possible in the park.”
When that maximum is reached, the kagus won’t be at a loss. Jean-Marc Meriot operates Blue River Provincial Park (also known as le Parc Provincial de la Rivière Bleue) — a National Park about two hours away from Theuerkauf and Bloc’s sanctuary — and has the space for potential future generations to continue thriving.
In that park, 60 birds were recorded there in 1984. Now, Marriott estimates that that number has grown to 1,000.
“We now have forest areas with new pairs of kagus,” he told The Guardian.
“The kagu population is doing very well, it is constantly expanding and things couldn’t be better.”
Header image via Frank Liebig / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)
