IT IS FOUR in the morning, and I am sitting alone on the rain-soaked soil of an island at the edge of Foveaux Strait, hunched against the pre-dawn cold and endless southwesterlies.

I have been in the thick blackness of this southern night for six hours already, waiting for the approaching dawn to silhouette the forest canopy with patches of grey.

My only company lies a couple of metres away, in a tangle of rotting rata stumps and roots: a tiny grey chick which looks as cold and disconsolate as I feel. It is H2, a seven-day old kakapo and one of the very latest additions to the embattled parrot’s population.

While I shiver in layers of expensive polypropylene and synthetic fabrics, H2 has only the finest coating of grey down for warmth and resembles nothing more than a patch of mould on the forest floor.

As a volunteer nest minder, I am spending two weeks looking after this fragile addition to the kakapo world while its mother, Heather, forages in the surrounding rimu forest of Codfish Island/Whenua Hou. Fatigued by 10 days of scant and intermittent sleep and up to four hours’ walking on waterlogged tracks each day, I find my biggest challenge is simply to stay awake.

It’s rough and it’s raw, but what I’m doing is the reality of conservation in this country. Forget photo opportunities and cuddling one of the world’s rarest birds. Saving this species requires patience, sturdy boots and getting used to rivulets of water trickling down your neck.

But it seems to be working. In fact, the 2002 breeding season has provided the most significant step forward for our beleaguered night parrot since 1976, when kakapo were rediscovered on Stewart Island.

Claims of pulling endangered species “back from the brink” or of “turning the tide” are often made in conservation work, but in this case the rhetoric is justified. To go from 62 to 86 birds in a single season—a 39 per cent increase in the world population of the species—is extraordinary. And it proves that the kakapo’s tenuous toehold on existence can be secured in our lifetime.

Michael Rands, chief executive of the global conservation alliance Birdlife International, called the 2002 kakapo breeding success “the best news for threatened bird conservation in recent years.”

The positive result was, of course, primarily due to the efforts of the kakapo themselves. However, it was supported by a Department of Conservation-led intervention programme that attracted staff, volunteers, VIPs and media from throughout New Zealand and overseas.