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CONSERVATION STATUS
DOC Status: Nationally Endangered
IUCN Status: Endangered
The Brown Teal is fully protected by the Wildlife Act 1953.
The Department of
Conservation has classified it as Nationally Endangered, with
a current distribution
within the Northland, Auckland, Wellington conservancies.
Based on IUCN criteria, the Brown Teal is internationally
classified as Endangered.
Brown teal were historically distributed throughout the lowland
freshwater
wetlands of the New Zealand mainland and occurred on many
offshore islands,
as well as Stewart Island and Chatham Island. The Brown Teal
recovery plan
and two previous reviews of historical data document the species'
known historic
range and summarises its decline over the past 150 years.
Brown teal are now largely restricted to Great Barrier Island,
where numbers
are between 700 and 1200 individuals, and the east coast of
Northland, south
of the Bay of Islands, where numbers are steadily declining
and are now below 400.
Small populations exist on Little Barrier Island, Rakitu Island,
Kawau Island,
Moturoa Island, Tiritiri Matangi Island, and Kapiti Island,
the last three of which
derive from successful reintroduction's of captive reared
birds. There are a few
pairs scattered in parts of Northland. A captive population
of Brown Teal numbers
around 20 pairs of birds.
Fewer than 2000 Brown Teal now exist in the wild, making
the species the rarest
waterfowl on the New Zealand mainland. As a response, the
Department of
Conservation prepared the Brown Teal recovery plan to guide
recovery actions
in the 10 years to 2005. This was approved by the Director-General
of
Conservation in February 1996.
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