Today, just 100–150 of these unique seabirds survive.

The battle to save the taiko has received a welcome boost with funding from the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy. This has been used to locate taiko breeding burrows on Chatham Island, so they can be protected.

Taiko are ocean wanderers, spending most of their lives at sea. They return to the Chatham Islands only to breed.

Saving the taiko
Cats, rats, pigs, possums and weka all threaten the taiko's survival. Feral cats are wide spread throughout the forests of the Chatham Islands. They present a major threat to over a dozen species that make their home there.

Biodiversity funding is being used to protect as many taiko as possible from these predators, using radio telemetry and dog teams.  Telemetry operations are conducted every two years; adult birds are caught as they fly inland to breeding areas, radio transmitters are attached and the birds are tracked as they fly to their burrows at night.  Each breeding season dog teams are used in ground searches to find active nests.

Finding the nests is not easy. Taiko prefer nesting in dense forest areas. Nest burrows can be 2–5 metres long, making it hard to tell whether a burrow is in use.  

Over the 2001/02 summer, Department of Conservation staff successfully located five new burrows, which were then actively protected from predators.

More good news was to come. The 2001/02 season produced seven taiko chicks, two more than the previous year.

Biodiversity funding enabled video monitoring of some taiko burrows. This provided valuable information about the bird's breeding activity.

Breeding takes place from September until May. Adults return to the Chathams in late September to prepare their burrows. Taiko usually mate for life and breeding pairs use the same burrow each year.

Taiko chicks spend the first 100 days of life in the burrow. The parents return every few days to feed the chicks until they are ready to fledge.

When they leave the nest, young taiko chicks fly out over the Pacific Ocean. They remain at sea for seven or eight years, returning to Chatham Island when they are ready to breed.

The threat status of taiko is ‘nationally critical’ – the highest priority for conservation management.