World’s heaviest insect recovers from near-extinction

“New Zealand’s wētāpunga, believed to be the world’s heaviest insect, is recovering from near-extinction thanks to a captive-breeding program that began in 2008. Once common in northern New Zealand, the species was reduced by the 1990s to a single population on Little Barrier Island near Auckland because of habitat loss and predation by invasive rats. Since 2010, conservationists have released more than 11,000 of the insects into protected habitats, resulting in self-sustaining populations on at least two islands,” reports The Doomslayer.

The Guardian elaborates:

“The population of New Zealand’s endemic wētāpunga – believed to be the world’s heaviest insect – is officially ‘increasing’ thanks to a groundbreaking breeding programme that has overseen the release of 11,000 insects into the wild.

A female wētāpunga can weigh as much as a mouse. Its body can grow up to 10cm long (nearly 4in) and its leg span can be as wide as 20cm.

It is the largest of 70 wētā species and was once found across parts of the North Island before predation from introduced species and habitat loss contributed to their decline. By the 1990s, they were considered ‘endangered’ and are now presumed extinct in the wild on New Zealand’s mainland. The insects reside primarily on a smattering of predator-free islands in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf and off the coast of Northland.

But their fortune is starting to change. Over the past 15 years, tens of thousands of wētāpunga have been bred at Butterfly Creek, a wildlife facility, and Auckland zoo, enabling the release of wētāpunga across new predator-free islands and some mainland reserves north of Auckland. Butterfly Creek and Auckland zoo established husbandry techniques that, over time, have been scaled up to rear large numbers of wētāpunga in communal creches…

Once big enough to protect themselves, the insects are transferred to their new habitat. The efforts have led to 45 separate translocations to wild habitats.”

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