325 kakapo: the world's heaviest parrot just had its best year in living memory

On New Zealand's predator-free offshore islands, the last chick of the 2026 kakapo season has passed 150 days old — and with it, the official count of the world's heaviest parrot reached 325. That is up from 235 earlier this year, and from just 51 in 1995. The 90 chicks are a single-season record for a bird that breeds only every two to four years, when rimu trees fruit en masse. The Department of Conservation's Kakapo Recovery Programme, run with Ngāi Tahu, has spent decades moving every remaining bird to safe islands and nursing each season along — and managers say the population may not have topped 300 for as long as 75 years.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program