It's not often there's human activity on the remote, pest-free Rangatira Island in the Chatham Islands. But when there is, it's essential.
A team headed by the Department of Conservation has just returned from the island, on a mission to collect wild eggs from tūturuatu, the New Zealand shore plover.
Leigh Percasky, from Isaac Wildlife and Conservation Trust, was part of the team carrying out the essential work.
"These guys are really critically endangered. There's around 250 birds left in the world," he told 1 NEWS.
"Our mission over there was to go and collect some wild eggs to bring back for the captive recovery programme."
Twenty-one eggs were gathered, before being transported by boat and plane back to Christchurch.
"The reason this is so desperately needed is the population over on the Chathams is quite stable. It's reached a point where it can't really grow anymore," Percasky says.
A big focus of the programme is to boost genetic diversity amongst the shore plover population.
University of Canterbury PhD student Ilina Cubrinovska says over the years, the population has become inbred.
"They've been unfortunately breeding between relatives because there's no other options for them," she says.
"Some of the birds have started exhibiting what we think are inbreeding depression. Some males have been infertile and there's been some aggressive behaviour."
The small native bird is mostly found in the Chatham Islands, as well as Auckland's Motutapu Island, and Waikawa Island in Hawke's Bay — all of which have restricted access and are pest-free.
As part of the captive recovery programme, the eggs are put into incubators to hatch.
They're then moved to a brooder for 30 days and released into an aviary once big enough.
This is where the University of Canterbury applies genetic programming to find suitable breeding partners for the chicks.
"The more diversity you can have within your population, the more a species is able to cope with changes in their environment. Whether that be climate-related or disease-related, it really helps create more robust, strong birds," Percasky says.
The last time an egg transfer like this occurred was back in 1996.
It's hoped there will be two more to the Chatham Islands over the next 10 years, but that all depends on approval from local iwi and imi.
"Because it's been so long since we collected the first birds that came from these islands, it's created a little bit of a bottle-neck in terms of being able to pair up birds that aren't related," Percasky says.
"We're basically setting ourselves up for the future in terms of creating genetically diverse and robust breeding pairs."
It's a foundation crucial for the survival of this small but important shorebird, one of the rarest in the world.
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