Editing Moa (section)

===Extinction===
[[File:Giant Haasts eagle attacking New Zealand moa.jpg|thumb|left|[[Haast's eagle]] attacking a moa pair]]
Before the arrival of humans, the moa's only predator was the massive [[Haast's eagle]]. New Zealand had been isolated for 80 million years and had few predators before human arrival, meaning that not only were its ecosystems extremely vulnerable to perturbation by outside species, but also the native species were ill-equipped to cope with human predators.<ref>{{Cite book|title = A Concise History of New Zealand|last = Mein Smith|first = Philippa|publisher = Cambridge University Press|year = 2012|isbn = 978-1107402171|pages = 2, 5–6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|title = Naïve birds and noble savages – a review of man-caused prehistoric extinctions of island birds|last1 = Milberg |last2= Tyrberg|first1 = Per |first2= Tommy|date = 1993|journal = Ecography|doi = 10.1111/j.1600-0587.1993.tb00213.x |volume=16 |issue = 3|pages=229–250|bibcode = 1993Ecogr..16..229M }}</ref>  Polynesians arrived sometime before 1300, and all moa genera were soon driven to extinction by hunting and, to a lesser extent, by habitat reduction due to forest clearance. By 1445, all moa had become extinct, along with Haast's eagle, which had relied on them for food. Recent research using [[carbon-14 dating]] of [[midden]]s strongly suggests that the events leading to extinction took less than a hundred years,<ref>Holdaway & Jacomb (2000)</ref> rather than a period of exploitation lasting several hundred years as previously hypothesised.

An expedition in the 1850s under Lieutenant A. Impey reported two emu-like birds on a hillside in the South Island; an 1861 story from the ''Nelson Examiner'' told of three-toed footprints measuring {{convert|36|cm|in|abbr=on}} between [[Tākaka]] and [[Riwaka]] that were found by a surveying party; and finally in 1878, the ''[[Otago Witness]]'' published an additional account from a farmer and his shepherd.<ref name="Fuller"/> An 86-year-old woman, [[Alice Mackenzie (author)|Alice McKenzie]], claimed in 1959 that she had seen a moa in [[Fiordland]] bush in 1887, and again on a Fiordland beach when she was 17 years old. She claimed that her brother had also seen a moa on another occasion.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/soundarchives/feature/alice_mckenzie_and_the_moa|title=Alice McKenzie and the Moa|website=[[Radio New Zealand]] }}</ref>  In childhood, Mackenzie saw a large bird that she believed to be a [[takahē]], but after its rediscovery in the 1940s, she saw a picture of it and concluded that she had seen something else.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/collections/catalogue/catalogue-item?record_id=191727%C2%A0 |title = Alice Mackenzie describes seeing a moa and talks about her book, Pioneers of Martins Bay}}</ref>
[[Image:Moa mock hunt.jpg|thumb|upright|An early 20th-century reconstruction of a moa hunt]]
Some authors have speculated that a few ''Megalapteryx didinus'' may have persisted in remote corners of New Zealand until the 18th and even 19th centuries, but this view is not widely accepted.<ref name = "Anderson">Anderson (1989)</ref> Some Māori hunters claimed to be in pursuit of the moa as late as the 1770s; however, these accounts possibly did not refer to the hunting of actual birds as much as a now-lost ritual among South Islanders.<ref>{{cite book | last=Anderson |first=Atholl |author-link=Atholl Anderson |date=1990 |title=Prodigious Birds: Moas and Moa-Hunting in New Zealand |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref> [[Whaler]]s and [[Seal hunter|sealers]] recalled seeing monstrous birds along the coast of the South Island, and in the 1820s, a man named George Pauley made an unverified claim of seeing a moa in the Otago region of New Zealand.<ref>Purcell, Rosamond (1999)</ref><ref name="Fuller"/>  Occasional speculation since at least the late 19th century,<ref>Gould, C. (1886)</ref><ref>Heuvelmans, B (1959)</ref> and as recently as 2008,<ref name="autogenerated2" /> has suggested that some moa may still exist, particularly in the wilderness of [[Westland, New Zealand|South Westland]] and [[Fiordland]]. A 1993 report initially interested the Department of Conservation, but the animal in a blurry photograph was identified as a [[red deer]].<ref name="Nickell">{{cite journal|last1=Nickell|first1=Joe |url= https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/the_new_zealand_moa_from_extinct_bird_to_cryptid/ |title=The New Zealand Moa: From Extinct Bird to Cryptid|journal=Skeptical Briefs|date=26 May 2017|volume=27|issue= 1|pages=8–9 |publisher=Center for Inquiry}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Nickell|first1=Joe|title=The New Zealand Moa: From Extinct Bird to Cryptid |date=26 May 2017 |work=Skeptical Inquirer |url=https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/the_new_zealand_moa_from_extinct_bird_to_cryptid/ |access-date=12 May 2019}}</ref> [[Cryptozoology|Cryptozoologists]] continue to search for them, but their claims and supporting evidence (such as of purported footprints)<ref name="autogenerated2">Laing, Doug (2008)</ref> have earned little attention from experts and are [[pseudoscience|pseudoscientific]].<ref name = "Anderson"/>

The rediscovery of the takahē in 1948 after none had been seen since 1898 showed that rare birds can exist undiscovered for a long time. However, the takahē is a much smaller bird than the moa, and was rediscovered after its tracks were identified—yet no reliable evidence of moa tracks has ever been found, and experts still contend that moa survival is extremely unlikely, since they would have to be living unnoticed for over 500 years in a region visited often by hunters and hikers.<ref name="autogenerated2" />