Looking at New Zealand - The Fight to Save the Saddleback

We had been given a lot of old Christmas cakes that the shops hadn’t been able to sell. The saddlebacks loved those and especially picking out all the sultanas and raisins and cherries.

– Don Merton, in Wild South: Saving New Zealand’s Endangered Birds, Rod Morris and Hal Smith, TVNZ, 1988 p. 126

Every waking hour we were deeply engrossed in the whys and wherefores of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it, because the challenges were formidable. Now much of this is routine, techniques have developed — and everyone’s more used to this kind of thing and can switch off at night and have a game of cards. In those days it was really urgent and vital that we find ways of overcoming obstacles — and succeed.

– Don Merton, in Wild South: Saving New Zealand’s Endangered Birds, Rod Morris and Hal Smith, TVNZ, 1988 p. 132

I was sure we should be able to catch the birds with a combination of mist-net and tape-recording, but it wasn’t as easy as you might think. They’re a particularly agile bird. They don’t fly much, but hop and climb about the vegetation —a bit like monkeys. Mist-nets are designed to catch birds in flight ...

– Don Merton, in Wild South: Saving New Zealand’s Endangered Birds, Rod Morris and Hal Smith, TVNZ, 1988 p. 124

The saddleback story must be one of the world’s few conservation success stories, where an endangered species has been reinstated in the wild.

– Rod Morris and Hal Smith, in Wild South: Saving New Zealand’s Endangered Birds, TVNZ, 1988 p. 130