Taukihepa / Big South Cape Island

Māori muttonbirders had traditionally visited the island each summer to hunt sooty shearwaters (muttonbirds) that came to nest on the island in the spring. In March 1964, muttonbirders arrived to find the island had been devastated by the effect of rats that were causing one of New Zealand's greatest ecological disasters of the twentieth century. Previously free of mammalian predators, the ecology of the island was devastated in a matter of years and many endemic species of bird (some flightless) were driven to extinction. The surviving biomass of insect and bird life has been heavily reduced. An eradication programme was initiated to rid the island of rats and the island was rat-free again in 2006. ==Animals that became extinct==

Despite intervention by the New Zealand Wildlife Service that trapped and transferred some surviving birds to other, rat free, off-shore islands, two species of bird did not survive and became extinct. These were Stead's bush wren and the South Island snipe. The New Zealand greater short-tailed bat also became extinct. == See also ==