The South Island takahē (Porphyrio hochstetteri) is a flightless swamphen indigenous to New Zealand and the largest living member of the rail family.

Two years later, a group of sealers in Tamatea / Dusky Sound, Fiordland, encountered a large bird which they chased with their dogs.

"It ran with great speed, and upon being captured uttered loud screams, and fought and struggled violently; it was kept alive three or four days on board the schooner and then killed, and the body roasted and ate by the crew, each partaking of the dainty, which was declared to be delicious.

He sent it to his father, palaeontologist Gideon Mantell, who realised this was Notornis, a living bird known only from fossil bones, and presented it in 1850 to a meeting of the Zoological Society of London.

He decided the skeletal differences between the Fiordland bird and Owen's North Island specimen were sufficient to make it a separate species, which he called Notornis hochstetteri, after the Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter.

[15] Pūkeko are members of a widespread species of swamphen, but based on fossil evidence have only been in New Zealand for a few hundred years, arriving from Australia after the islands were first settled by Polynesians.

[15] A morphological and genetic study of living and extinct Porphyrio revealed that North and South Island takahē were, as originally proposed by Meyer, separate species.

[16] The North Island species (P. mantelli, as described by Owen) was known to Māori as moho; it is extinct and only known from skeletal remains and one possible specimen.

[21] It is a stocky, powerful bird, with short strong legs and a massive bill which can deliver a painful bite to the unwary.

Adult takahē plumage is silky, iridescent, and mostly dark-blue or navy-blue on the head, neck, and underside, peacock blue on the wings.

[25] The South Island takahē can often be seen plucking a snow grass (Danthonia flavescens) stalk, taking it into one claw, and eating only the soft lower parts, which appears to be its favourite food, while the rest is discarded.

Although this behaviour was previously unknown, the related Australasian swamphen or pūkeko occasionally feeds on eggs and nestlings of other birds as well.

Small numbers have also been successfully translocated to five predator-free offshore islands, Tiritiri Matangi, Kapiti, Maud, Mana and Motutapu, where they can be viewed by the public.

Additionally, captive takahē can be viewed at Te Anau and Pūkaha / Mount Bruce National wildlife centres.

In September 2010 a pair of takahē (Hamilton and Guy) were released at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve – the first non-Department of Conservation institution to hold this species.

[31] In 2018, eighteen South Island takahē were reintroduced to the Kahurangi National Park, 100 years after their local extinction.

[34] The near extinction of the formerly widespread South Island takahē is due to a number of factors: over-hunting, loss of habitat and introduced predators have all played a part.

The introduction of red deer (Cervus elaphus) represent a severe competition for food, while stoats (Mustela erminea) take a role as predators.

Since the species is K-selected, i.e. is long-lived, reproduces slowly, takes several years to reach maturity, and had a large range that has drastically contracted in comparatively few generations, inbreeding depression is a significant problem.

[36] The causes of the pre-European decline of takahē were postulated by Williams (1962) and later supported in a detailed report by Mills et al.

European settlement in the nineteenth century almost wiped them out through hunting and introducing mammals such as deer which competed for food and predators (e.g. stoats) which preyed on them directly.

The New Zealand government took immediate action by closing off a remote part of Fiordland National Park to prevent the birds from being bothered.

Staff used hand-held puppets that replayed sounds of adult contact calls while feeding and interacting with the chicks, to help prevent the birds becoming "imprinted" on humans.

The success of these translocations has meant that the takahē's island metapopulation appears to have reached its carrying capacity, as revealed by the increasing ratio of non-breeding to breeding adults and declines in produced offspring.

[citation needed] Recently, human intervention has been required to maintain the breeding success of the takahē, which is relatively low in the wild compared to other, less threatened species, so methods such as the removal of infertile eggs from nests and the captive rearing of chicks have been introduced to manage the takahē population.

[citation needed] It was reported that several takahē have accidentally been killed by hunters under contract to the Department of Conservation in the course of control measures aimed at reducing populations of the similar-looking pūkeko.

An important management development has been the stringent control of deer in the Murchison Mountains and other takahē areas of Fiordland National Park.