Only a few takahe were collected in the nineteenth century, and after 1898 none was recorded. The species was treated as gone. Geoffrey Orbell, a doctor from Invercargill, did not accept that, and in November 1948 he located living birds in the Murchison Mountains above Lake Te Anau.
Recovery has been slow and hands-on. The remnant population was tiny, restricted to alpine tussock that is marginal habitat compared with the lowlands takahe once occupied, and threatened by introduced stoats and by deer competing for tussock. Captive rearing, predator control and translocation to predator-free islands and fenced sanctuaries have lifted the total into the mid-hundreds, growing at a few per cent a year.
The common shorthand of a Lazarus species can mislead. The takahe never came back on its own; without continuous predator control and translocation the recovered population would not be self-sustaining across most of its former range.