Norfolk Kaka - Extinction

Extinction

The Polynesians who lived at the Island for some time before the arrival of the Europeans hunted the Kākā for food before disappearing from the island around the 1600s. It was also hunted for food and trapped as a pet after the arrival of the first settlers in 1788. The species' population suffered heavily after a penal colony was maintained from 1788 to 1814, and again from 1825 to 1854. The species likely became extinct in the wild in the early nineteenth century sometime during the period of this second penal colony. It was not recorded by Ensign Abel D. W. Best on either Norfolk or Phillip Island in his 1838/1839 diary entires. As Best collected specimens for ornithology, including the Norfolk Parakeet (which he called "Lories", being similar in shape), it is hard to accept that he would not have documented this much more attractive quarry, had the Kākā still been present. The last bird in captivity died in London in 1851.