Human settlement of islands across the Pacific Ocean was followed by waves of faunal extinctions that occurred so rapidly that their dynamics are difficult to reconstruct in space and time. These extinctions included large, wingless birds called moa that were endemic to New Zealand. Here we reconstructed the range and extinction dynamics of six genetically distinct species of moa across New Zealand at a fine spatiotemporal resolution, using hundreds of thousands of process-explicit simulations of climate–human–moa interactions, which were validated against inferences of occurrence and range contraction from an extensive fossil record. These process-based simulations revealed important interspecific differences in the ecological and demographic attributes of moa and established how these differences influenced likely trajectories of geographic and demographic declines of moa following Polynesian colonization of New Zealand. We show that despite these interspecific differences in extinction dynamics, the spatial patterns of geographic range collapse of moa species were probably similar. It is most likely that the final populations of all moa species persisted in suboptimal habitats in cold, mountainous areas that were generally last and least impacted by people. We find that these refugia for the last populations of moa continue to serve as isolated sanctuaries for New Zealand’s remaining flightless birds, providing fresh insights for conserving endemic species in the face of current and future threats.

人类在太平洋岛屿上定居之后，动物群开始出现一波又一波的灭绝，这种灭绝发生得如此之快，以至于它们的动态很难在空间和时间上重建。这些灭绝事件包括新西兰特有的大型无翅鸟类恐鸟。在这里，我们使用数十万个气候-人类-恐鸟相互作用的过程显式模拟，以精细的时空分辨率重建了新西兰六种基因不同的恐鸟物种的范围和灭绝动态，这些模拟根据发生和范围的推论进行了验证来自大量化石记录的收缩。这些基于过程的模拟揭示了恐鸟生态和人口统计属性中重要的种间差异，并确定了这些差异如何影响新西兰波利尼西亚殖民统治后恐鸟地理和人口下降的可能轨迹。我们表明，尽管灭绝动态存在这些种间差异，恐鸟物种地理范围崩溃的空间模式可能是相似的。所有恐鸟物种的最终种群很可能都生活在寒冷山区的次优栖息地，这些地区通常受人类影响最后且最少。我们发现，这些恐鸟最后种群的避难所仍然是新西兰仅存的不会飞的鸟类的孤立保护区，为面对当前和未来的威胁保护特有物种提供了新的见解。