EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
The first time Fiona Pardington saw a huia bird it was in a Christmas pudding. The artist, then a girl, bit down on a slice of her Aunt Nelly’s cake, only to hit an old silver sixpence bearing an illustration of the extinct species.
Pardington spat out the coin and looked at the bird, the male with its long, curved beak and pronounced wattle. She knew little about the huia; its distinctive song, nor its…