Karure Black Robin Wins 2026 Bird of the Year

The karure black robin, once reduced to five birds in the 1980s, has won Forest & Bird's 2026 Bird of the Year election with 26,610 votes.

The karure black robin, a shy little bird from Rēkohu in the Chatham Islands, has won Forest & Bird's 2026 Bird of the Year after a closely contested election. According to Forest & Bird, karure finished at the top of the pecking order with 26,610 votes, holding off the kākāpō (19,445) and the kārearea, New Zealand falcon (17,423). The Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust served as campaign manager for the winning bird.

Participation soared this year, with Forest & Bird reporting 105,000 people choosing their favourite manu at birdoftheyear.org.nz — roughly one in every 50 Kiwis. RNZ notes that 98,920 validated votes were cast, and 88 percent of those came from within Aotearoa New Zealand — a reversal of 2023, when the majority of votes came from overseas. Forest & Bird says growth came from reaching new audiences, especially children and young people, with pop-up voting booths taking the election into the wild. The result is the biggest homegrown turnout in the competition's history, which has run since 2005.

The karure is one of the world's great conservation comeback stories. In 1980 just five birds were left, including the only fertile female, and the Chathams community and the Wildlife Service — later the Department of Conservation — rebuilt the population from a single breeding pair, Old Blue and Old Yellow. Both Forest & Bird and RNZ report there are now around 350 adult birds living on two pest-free nature reserve islands, Maung'Re / Mangere and Hokorereoro / Rangatira. Despite that recovery, the species remains classified as Nationally Critical.

Underneath the memes and 'beaking news' — the election leaned into candidate and party vibes, with the Tree Birds winning the party vote on 100,793 votes — sits a serious message. Forest & Bird's Rebecca Hatch says 80 percent of New Zealand's manu are in some or serious trouble, and eight of the top ten finishers this year are among them. Chatham Islands remain a vital biodiversity hotspot supporting 20 percent of New Zealand's threatened bird species, and Hatch says voters repeatedly told her they hadn't realised how many native birds are struggling.

Suitable karure habitat on the two nature reserve islands is nearly at capacity, so the population can only keep growing if a third population is established elsewhere. Forest & Bird points to Pitt Island, which sits between the two reserves, as the best possibility. RNZ reports the Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust's Predator Free Chathams project is about to begin removing feral cats — the biggest karure predator — from Pitt Island (Rangihaute / Rangiuria). The Trust's staff families were part of the original recovery effort, and Pitt Island School contributed art and poems to this year's winning campaign.