We took a thermal tour today with our knowledgeable guide, Stephen. We started at Lake Rotorua followed by a quick city tour and then drove to Rainbow Mountain.
The huia bird is extinct. New Zealand has the worst extinction rate on the planet. 200 species of birds existed before the Māori arrived 700 years ago. Thirty species were gone when the Europeans arrived three hundred years later. Since then twenty more bird species have disappeared leaving only 150. That’s an extinction rate of 25%.
In September 2023, a set of female and male taxidermied huia birds sold for $245,000. This was very controversial. They are being exploited even after death.
The female has a large curved beak; the male has a smaller beak.
A huia feather is the rarest feather in the world and a single one sold for $2,450 in 2010.
In 1901 the Duke of York, heir to the British throne, was gifted a huia feather that he wore in his hat. This was then in fashion and was bad for the already dwindling in numbers.
The huia was particularly vulnerable to clearing of the land as it could only live in old-growth forest where there were abundant rotting trees filled with wood-boring insect larvae. It seems it could not survive in regenerating, secondary forests.
Birds lose their webbing if they spend a lot of time in the acidic waters. I imagine that they lose their lives if they land in the thermal lakes.
Kanuka, aka tea-tree, and Manuka plants will grow near thermal areas where the warm land will kill the roots of other plants such as ferns.
The now extinct moa was a 12-foot flightless bird almost twice as big as an ostrich. Haast Eagle had a wingspan of 6 feet and weighed 24 lbs. By 1445, all moa had become extinct, along with Haast’s eagle, which had relied on them for food.
Arching Clubmoss can tolerate warm soil and thrives on the fringes of hot pools and springs.
It is part of an ancient plant group that was common millions of years ago, when all plants were flowerless. These plants formed most of the earth’s coal deposits.
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