Black Robin Was Down to Five Birds. Now It’s New Zealand’s Bird of the Year

This adorable species fought back against all odds.

A bird that was once reduced to just five individuals has won New Zealand’s 2026 Bird of the Year. The karure, or Chatham Islands black robin, took the title with 25,610 votes, as 105,000 people participated in the annual wildlife popularity contest.

That victory is all the more remarkable because the black robin was once one of the world’s rarest birds. By 1980, only five were left on Earth, including just one fertile female. Today, around 350 adults survive on two predator-free islands.

However, black robin is still classified as Nationally Critical. While its recovery is indeed a great conservation success story, it has also exposed a new problem. The two islands that saved the bird soon may not have enough room and resources for the population to keep growing.

“Karure are critically threatened, with just 350 birds, and there’s a lot of mahi (Māori word meaning work) to do to make sure their population can continue to grow,” Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust, the organization which ran campaigns to save the bird, said in a Facebook post. 

Five birds started an extraordinary recovery

The black robin lives only on the remote Chatham Islands, about 800 km east of New Zealand’s South Island. Habitat loss and introduced rats and cats devastated the species, and by the start of the 20th century it survived only on tiny Little Mangere Island.

The situation became desperate. In 1976, conservationists found just seven birds and moved them to Mangere Island. By 1980, only five remained. Worse still, there was just one breeding pair: Old Blue, the last fertile female, and Old Yellow.

Conservationists needed a way to produce more young than the tiny population could raise on its own.

They turned to cross-fostering, an unusual technique in which black robin eggs and chicks were raised by another native bird, the Chatham Island tit. That freed the robins to lay again while foster parents raised some of their young, dramatically increasing the number of chicks the remaining birds could produce.

The strategy worked. Every black robin alive today descends from Old Blue. The population gradually recovered, and conservationists later began actively managing the birds between their two safe islands.

×

Get smarter every day...

Stay ahead with ZME Science and subscribe.

Daily Newsletter
The science you need to know, every weekday.

Weekly Newsletter
A week in science, all in one place. Sends every Sunday.
No spam, ever. Unsubscribe anytime. Review our Privacy Policy.

Thank you! One more thing...

Please check your inbox and confirm your subscription.

Moving birds to strengthen the population

The next phase became particularly important in 2022. Conservationists moved 10 female black robins from Rangatira Island to Mangere Island, where the population had become heavily skewed towards males and faced a high risk of disappearing altogether.

RelatedPosts

Scientists Say Dogs, Rats and Even Birds Dream About Their Daily Lives and We Finally Know What They See in Their Sleep
Move aside, Justin Bieber. Bird sounds just dropped you off the chart
Predators can learn what food to avoid from watching TV
Bird populations in Europe plummeting since the 1980s

Five breeding seasons later, Mangere had 39 adults—21 males and 18 females—and eight chicks had fledged during the 2025-26 breeding season.

The intervention also brought more Rangatira ancestry into the Mangere population. More than half of its birds now have ancestry from Rangatira, and research indicates that birds carrying that ancestry have better survival and reproductive success than those descended only from the old Mangere population.

Forest & Bird, a charity specialising in the protection and conservation of New Zealand’s indigenous flora and fauna, now estimates that roughly 350 adult black robins live across the species’ two island refuges.

The bird’s comeback hits a new limit

In 1980, the priority was ‘How do we stop five birds from disappearing?’ Today, it is increasingly ‘How do we give 350 birds enough safe habitat to keep growing?’

The two pest-free islands contain only a limited amount of good black robin habitat. The birds need lowland coastal forest with good tree cover and plenty of insects to survive, and much of the best territory is already occupied.

This means simply protecting the birds where they are is no longer enough. On Rangatira, population growth is already slowing. As more birds compete for the same resources, researchers are seeing fewer young produced per breeding female.

In ecological terms, the population is approaching the island’s carrying capacity — the maximum number of birds its habitat can reliably support.

Conservationists are therefore looking beyond the two existing islands. Pitt Island, which lies between them, is one possible location for another black robin population. The Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust is preparing work to remove feral cats there and restore habitat.

But Pitt Island has been tried before. An earlier attempt to establish a black robin population there failed, possibly because introduced mice competed with the birds for food.

That means conservationists cannot simply move a few birds and hope for the best. They first need to make sure there is enough food, suitable habitat and protection from introduced predators for a new population to survive.

Saving a species is not a one-time job

The black robin’s win also shows why Bird of the Year has become an important conservation campaign. 

Around 88 percent of this year’s votes came from within New Zealand, making 2026 the competition’s biggest homegrown result. Roughly one in every 50 New Zealanders took part. Organizers also used pop-up voting booths and outreach aimed at children and young people to bring attention to native species many people rarely encounter.

“That’s exactly why Bird of the Year matters. It helps people discover, connect with, and fall in love with the incredible diversity of New Zealand’s wildlife, while shining a light on the real challenges nature is facing,” Rebecca Hatch from New Zealand’s leading conservation organization, Forest & Bird, said.

Those challenges are widespread. Forest & Bird says around 80 percent of New Zealand’s native birds are in some degree of trouble. Eight of this year’s top 10 Bird of the Year finishers face serious conservation threats.

For the black robin, extinction is no longer as immediate a threat as it was when five birds remained. But its survival is hardly guaranteed. Conservationists now have to turn an extraordinary rescue into a population that has enough habitat, genetic resilience and safe places to survive for the long term.

Humans managed to bring the black robin back from five birds to around 350. Its next test is whether we can give those birds somewhere safe to go.