The kakapo is the world's heaviest parrot and was functionally extinct before intensive management brought it back from 51 individuals, providing welfare lessons for conservation of critically endangered species.
Intensive individual management including hand-rearing of ill chicks, supplementary feeding stations, and health monitoring imposes welfare costs in terms of human contact and intervention. The alternative — population extinction — makes these welfare costs acceptable. Individual health records allow rapid response to welfare problems in every bird.