The Lyall"s wren was, for many generations, perfectly attuned to New Zealand"s remote mammal-less landscape at the bottom of the South Pacific Ocean.

 

When New Zealand was finally settled by people – ancestors of the Māori who first arrived sometime in the 13th Century – the small, flightless bird found itself ill-prepared for predators like the Polynesian rat.

 

By the time European settlers arrived in the early 19th Century, the bird had been wiped out on the two main islands. Only one small population was left on Stephens Island, an island separated from the northern tip of the South Island in New Zealand"s Cook Strait. 168ufa