they are very rare over here. I think there's only two or three people in the South Island with them, and a handful in the North Island. I rather suspect they started out in the country as smuggled birds rather than legal imports.
I wonder why MPI is concerned enough about smuggled tropical, herbivorous iguanas to mass-euthanize them but won't do the same with smuggled bird species like blue-crowned conures and Derbyan parakeets. Probably because it would be seen as cruel to birds but not to reptiles.
