Scientists are getting creative to save the kakapo | Hacker News Reader

Scientists are getting creative to save the kakapo

nationalgeographic.com

85 pointspseudolus11 comments

I had no idea that the parrot emoji was based on the Kakapo attempting to mate with Mark Carwadine! That's a really funny video, too.

I wasn't so impressed by the TV series, but the original book of Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams is one of my favourite books ever - highly recommended.

The event in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlk9u8MIv7o&t=52s

I can recommend that book as well, it's fantastic. It's what I thought of when I heard the word Kakapo because it's mentioned so extensively in it.

Highly recommend listening to the RNZ podcast mentioned in the article, gives a great sense of the hard work the scientists and rangers are doing to keep this species going.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/kakapo-files

wow, cool to see NZ conservation efforts on here. NZ has many many endangered species and there is an amazing amount of technology and science being used to try and protect a lot of our species.

NZ's rat eradication plan really impressed me.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/new-zealand-inva...

https://goodnature.co.nz

(And the NOOSKI rat trap.)

We should apply similar strategies to all invasive species. For example, invent an autonomous, nontoxic python trap for the Florida Everglades. Create X-Prizes. Fund research. Education. Pretty much try everything.

We're now in the Garden Earth phase. Meaning active management. There are very few (if any) natural ecosystems remaining. Since we broke it, we bought it.

I don’t understand. They have drones carrying semen... are they... raping the female birds with drones?

The conservationists are the ones carrying out the artificial inseminations. The drones are only used to ferry the semen from one island to the other.

The article doesn't clarify why they are using the drones for transportation but it is probably cheaper and/or faster than doing it the old-fashioned way.

Nice to see that technologies are used for saving nature not only digitalising our lives

The website seems to be crashing chrome for me, anyone else experiencing this?

Yes, nationalgeographic.com has been crashing in Chrome for me for a while too.

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