Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris)
Posted on 31 December, 1907 in Extinct
Year Last Seen:
1907
Comments:
This species is known from New Zealand's North Island, but it was last recorded in 1907 and is now Extinct. Habitat loss, hunting and disease have all been implicated in its decline.
Habitat:
It appears to have required large tracts of primary, native forest.
Causes:
The cause of its extinction is unclear but it was probably primarily due to habitat loss, especially of dead trees on which they depended for extracting beetle larvae (Burton 1974), possibly along with hunting and disease (Myers 1923).
Distribution:
Heteralocha acutirostris was endemic to the southern portion of the North Island, New Zealand. It was intensively studied by Buller in the second half of the 19th century (Phillipps 1963), and is known from numerous specimens (Greenway 1967), but declined to extinction around the turn of the century with the last confirmed record being in 1907 (Myers 1923).