Introduced species
Kerer? were once superabundant throughout New Zealand but their numbers have declined dramatically over most of their range, starting when M?ori arrived 1000 years ago and particularly in the last 200 years since European colonisation, due to hunting, habitat loss, and introduced predators especially ship rats, stoats, possums and feral cats.
When P?keh? first came to New Zealand, people commented on how trusting many native birds were. They were naïve about mammalian species such as humans and our companion animals and did not recognise the threat of predation we and they posed.
