The story of the Takahe is one of our most remarkable conservation successes. It was last seen in 1898 and presumed extinct for the next fifty years. In 1948 a population was rediscovered in Fiordland. Yet story of the Takahe has as much to do with who found them as with anything else. The man who rediscovered them was Dr Geoffrey Orbell, a well-respected physician from Invercargill. He had read widely about the Takahe and interviewed dozens of outdoorsmen who had explored the largely uncharted