Re:I know hippies will mod me down for this (Score 1)

I don't know much about the kakapo, but changes we make to an ecosystem sometimes affect it in surprising ways. For many years, the alligator was fair game--in a quite literal sense--in the Florida Everglades. The meat was good and the leather was highly valued for boots, purses, belts, and other items. Plus, alligators were a dangerous nuisance. "They'd none of them be missed," as Ko-Ko of Titipu might say. Surprisingly, as the alligator population shrunk, so did the population of white-tailed deer. Here's the scoop: In the dry season, gators dig down into the mud to stay moist and cool. In so doing, they create pits which serve as watering holes for deer, birds, and other critters. When folks had killed off too many gators, the populations of white-tailed dear, great blue herons, egrets, fish, turtles, etc. began to shrink. If alligators had gone extinct, the ecology of the Everglades would have been decimated. There are numerous examples of this kind of surprising interrelationship. (Star Trek IV comes to mind. ) But truly, we're just not smart enough to figure it all out in advance, so we sometimes decide it is prudent to take a cautions approach.... That said, it sounds like the kakapo is now so far removed from its original ecosystem that any possible ecological damage has probably already occurred.