New Zealand's beloved Bird of the Year - the kea - could soon be no more, according to an international study.
The national bird has been upgraded from 'vulnerable' to 'endangered' in BirdLife International's reassessment of birds' threat statuses for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Forest and Bird chief conservation adviser Kevin Hackwell says, "Every year, kea nests are destroyed by introduced predators like rats, stoats, possums, and feral cats."
"Kea who don't regularly interact with people really benefit from large-scale aerial predator control," he says.
It follows a study which found only two per cent of kea nests were successful.
The success rate improved following the use of biodegradable 1080 by the Department of Conservation, increasing the kea nests' survival to 27 per cent in 2015.
"However, those kea that are fed by tourists and some locals tend to try novel foods, and sadly, they are particularly susceptible to eating the poison baits used to kill predators," Mr Hackwell says.
"One of our greatest conservation challenges is to stop tourists and others from feeding kea. We can best help kea by never offering them food."
The decline in kea is also being impacted by the effects of climate change, as warming temperatures may limit their habitat range in alpine environments.
Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands, there are now only 3000 to 7000 kea left.
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