Only 500? Incredible.
“Only 500? Incredible.”
Only 500 because the Maori were the first humans to arrive, and they arrived relatively late, only 1000 years ago or less. Much like North America, where the arrival of migrating Siberians about 10,000 years ago coincides with the following rapid extinction of large North American mammals.
What’s interesting about New Zealand is that, because NZ was volcanic in origin and geographically remote, birds arrived there first, and then, without any competition, were able to evolve to fill all the ecological niches, i.e., the large grazers, the predators, etc were all some form of bird. So the Haast eagle was the premier predator, hunting the biggest prey — huge flightless grazing birds.
By the way, there was a British explorer-hunter who, when traveling in the NZ mountains during the early days of exploration, casually remarked in a diary that he shot and ate 2 very large birds of prey. Those birds may have been the last 2 birds of the species, or a related predator species.