One of New Zealand's rarest birds has become critically endangered after feral cats have decimated the population.
The Department of Conservation (DOC) said there are just 126 Southern Dotterels birds left - all on Stewart Island.
Department of Conservation biodiversity ranger Daniel Cocker told AM on Wednesday a big reason for the dramatic decline in Southern Dotterels is because of feral cats.
"So over the breeding season, unfortunately, we think we lost 40 to 50 individuals as a result of feral cat predation," Cocker told AM co-host Laura Tupou.
"The population in the last year was 144, so it's quite a decline down to 126, obviously, it doesn't represent the 40 to 50 birds we think we've lost."
It wasn't all bad news with Cocker saying the "blow is softened" by some new Dotterels being born during breeding season.
Cooker puts the decline in the Dotterels population down to the increase in the number of feral cats.
"Feral cats will happily go for a Dotterels any time but we had an increase number of feral cats, particularly at the end of last year as a result of a rat plague, which increased the feral cat numbers," he said.
"Then the rats happened to die off just before the breeding season and so there were a lot of hungry feral cats out there."
Cocker says the key to protecting Dotterels birds is making sure there are enough feral cats traps.
"At the moment, the Dotterel team, including myself, we're installing more feral cat trapping lines and just increasing the area and the number of traps we've got," he told AM.
"We're trying to prevent feral cats from moving from the valleys up onto the hilltops where the Dotterels bread, so it's really just about closing that down and preventing them getting up to the hilltops." '
Southern Dotterels can potentially have a lifespan of 20-25 years but due to predation from pests, their average life expectancy is less than five years.
Feral cats have been in the headlines this year after a North Canterbury Hunting Competition was forced to withdraw its new category, where children 14 and under hunt feral cats for a prize of $250.
This created widespread debate with Newshub journalist Patrick Gower saying feral cats "need to be shot", "run over" and "wiped off the face of Aotearoa" as he called for the cancelled children's wild feline killing competition to return.
"If they're going to hunt, and there are feral cats in the way, then we have to wipe them out. Feral cats need to be shot, they need to be run over, they need to be trapped, they need to be wiped off the face of Aotearoa, New Zealand," he told AM last month.
Gower said he will always be on the side of native birds when it comes to feral cats "every single day of the week".
Watch the full interview with Daniel Cocker in the video above.
