 Beginning in the 1840s , European settlers cleared vast tracts of land for farming and grazing , further reducing kakapo habitat . They brought more dogs and other mammalian predators , including domestic cats , black rats and stoats . Europeans knew little of the kakapo until George Gray of the British Museum described it from a skin in 1845 . As the Māori had done , early European explorers and their dogs ate kakapo . In the late 19th century , the kakapo became well known as a scientific curiosity , and thousands were captured or killed for zoos , museums and collectors . Most captured specimens died within months . From at least the 1870s , collectors knew the kakapo population was declining ; their prime concern was to collect as many as possible before the bird became extinct . 
