One of New Zealand's critically endangered native kākāpō known as Jimmy has been found dead on Whenua Hou.
A post-mortem has revealed that the bird died from complications arising from an X-ray he received weeks earlier during investigation of a wing injury.
Department of Conservation kākāpō expert Dr Andrew Digby told Newshub: "It's a really sad day for us - we know all of these kakapo individually.
"We found Jimmy dead on Whenua Hou last week when we went to check on him. A couple of weeks before that when we checked on him, he had an injury."
Scientists removed Jimmy from the island in order to treat his injury, but the X-ray he was given lead to complications which killed him.
Dr Digby says: "It's always a balancing act whether or not to remove birds from the wild.
"Many kākāpō lives have been saved by vet intervention. In this instance, this wasn't the case and that's really unfortunate."
Dr Digby says Jimmy's death is a major blow as he hadn't yet fathered any Kākāpō chicks.
"He hasn't passed on his genes, and he's one of the founder Kākāpō, one of our more important, genetically diverse ones."
Kākāpō are impressively long lived, with a life span of up to 90 years. Since Jimmy was captured as an adult, his exact age was uncertain.
Dr Digby told Newshub Jimmy was "at least 35 but probably a lot older".
There are now only 151 kākāpō left in New Zealand.
Newshub.
