NEW YORK & COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 23, 2026--
Bluestone Equity Partners (“Bluestone”), an institutionally backed private equity firm focused on the global Sports, Media & Entertainment industry, today announced a three-year partnership with USA Archery, the National Governing Body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of archery in the United States.
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The partnership comes as the United States Archery Team (the “USAT”) prepares for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. It includes sleeve sponsorship across all USAT and international jerseys worn by USA Archery athletes, with branding appearing on USAT uniforms as athletes train and compete around the world.
Bluestone’s Founder & Managing Partner, Bobby Sharma, previously served on the Board of Directors of USA Archery from 2021 to 2024. The partnership builds on a longstanding relationship and a shared commitment to competitive excellence, athlete development, and long-term stewardship within the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement.
“Having served on the Board of USA Archery, I’ve seen firsthand the discipline and preparation required to compete at the highest levels,” said Sharma. “With the 2028 Games returning to the United States, we are proud to support Team USA as it prepares to compete on home soil. This partnership demonstrates our continued commitment and our belief in the institutional strength of U.S. Olympic sport.”
Formed in 1879, USA Archery supports more than 40,000 members and instructors across all 50 states and sanctions hundreds of competitions annually, from grassroots development programs to elite international events. The organization provides structured athlete pathways spanning youth, collegiate, high-performance, Olympic, and Paralympic programs.
In 2025, USA Archery athletes earned 52 international medals across World Cups and other global competitions, reflecting the program’s depth and competitive strength. Building on recent Olympic and Paralympic podium finishes, the USAT will continue to compete at the highest levels of international sport as Los Angeles 2028 approaches.
“We are proud to welcome Bluestone as a National Team partner as we prepare for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles,” said Rod Menzer, CEO of USA Archery. “Bluestone’s support will be visible on our uniforms as our athletes compete internationally. Their long-standing engagement within our governance structure demonstrates a shared commitment to excellence, preparation, and sustained competitive success.”
USA Archery represents Bluestone’s first formal sponsorship and reflects the firm’s long-term orientation toward mission-driven sports institutions. Beyond capital, Bluestone engages across the global sports ecosystem through board leadership, institutional partnerships, and disciplined governance — reinforcing a sustained commitment to excellence and long-term value creation.
About Bluestone Equity
Bluestone Equity Partners is a private equity firm headquartered in New York City, with a core focus on the global Sports, Media & Entertainment industry. Leveraging institutional investment discipline, deep industry expertise, and a global network of leaders, Bluestone partners with exceptional businesses and management teams to drive strategic growth and long-term value creation. For more information, visit www.bluestoneequity.com.
About USA Archery
USA Archery is the National Governing Body for the Olympic and Paralympic sport of archery in the United States. Founded in 1879, the organization promotes and grows the sport nationwide while supporting athletes to achieve sustained competitive excellence at the Olympic, Paralympic, World Championship, and international levels.
Bluestone Equity Partners' partnership with USA Archery includes a sleeve sponsorship across all United States Archery Team and international jerseys worn by USA Archery athletes.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The world’s only flightless parrot species was once thought to be doomed by design. The kakapo is too heavy, too slow and, frankly, too delicious to survive around predators, and takes a shamelessly relaxed approach to reproduction.
But the nocturnal and reclusive New Zealand native bird ’s fate is teetering toward survival after an unlikely conservation effort that has coaxed the population from 50 to more than 200 over three decades. This year, with a bumper crop of the strange parrot’s favorite berries prompting a rare enthusiasm for mating, those working to save the birds hope for a record number of chicks in February, which would move the kakapo closer to defying what was not long ago believed to be certain extinction.
Kakapo live on three tiny, remote islands off New Zealand’s southern coast and chances to see them in the wild are scarce. This breeding season has launched one of the birds to internet fame through a livestreamed video of her underground nest, where a chick was expected to hatch this week.
The kakapo is a majestic creature that can live for 60 to 80 years. But they’re undoubtedly weird to look at.
Birds can weigh over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). They have owllike faces, whiskers, and mottled green, yellow and black plumage that mimics dappled light on the forest floor.
That’s where the flightless parrot lives, which has made its survival complicated.
“Kakapo also have a really strong scent,” said Deidre Vercoe, the operations manager for the Department of Conservation’s kakapo program. “They smell really musky and fruity — gorgeous smell.”
The pungent aroma was bad news for the parrots when humans arrived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. The introduction of rats, dogs, cats and stoats, as well as hunting by people and destruction of native forest habitats, drove species of the country’s flourishing flightless birds — the kakapo among them — to near or complete extinction.
By 1974, no kakapo were known to exist. Conservationists kept looking, however, and in the late 1970s, a new population of the birds was discovered.
Reversing their fortunes hasn’t been simple.
One reason the kakapo population has grown slowly is that its breeding is, like everything about the birds, peculiar. Years or even decades can pass between successful clutches of eggs.
A breeding season only happens every two to four years, in response to bumper crops of fruit from the native rimu trees the parrots favor, which last happened in 2022. A huge food source is needed for chicks to survive but it’s not known exactly how adult birds become aware of an abundant harvest.
“They’re probably up there in the canopy assessing the fruiting,” said Vercoe. “When there’s a large crop developing, they somehow tune into that.”
That’s when things get really strange. Male kakapo position themselves in dug-out bowls in the ground and emit sonorous booming sounds followed by noises known as “chings,” which sound like the movement of rusty bedsprings.
The deep booms, which on clear nights can be heard across the forest, attract female kakapo to the bowls. Females can lay up to four eggs before raising their chicks alone.
Since January, admirers of the birds have had a rare glimpse into the process through a livestream showing the underground nest of 23-year-old kakapo Rakiura on the island of Whenua Hou, where she has laid three eggs, two of them fertile. So precarious is the species’ survival that the eggs were exchanged for fake replacements while the real ones were incubated indoors.
A technician on Tuesday replaced the fake eggs with the first near-hatching egg. The kakapo kept her distance while the switch was made but quickly returned to the nest, seemingly unperturbed. The second real egg is expected to be added within days.
Perhaps the only thing stranger than the kakapo is the lengths to which New Zealanders have gone to save it. Quadrupling the population over the past three decades has required their relocation to three remote, predator-free offshore islands and the micromanaging of the parrots’ every romantic entanglement.
“We do what we can to make sure we don’t lose any further genetic diversity,” Vercoe said. “We manage that carefully through having the best matches possible on each island.”
Each bird has a name and is monitored by a small backpack tracker; if a bird vanishes, they’re nearly impossible to find. With the kakapo still critically endangered, there’s little prospect of conservation efforts ending anytime soon, although those working with the birds are easing their hands-on management each breeding season.
The painstaking work to preserve the species might seem odd to outsiders, but the parrot is just one of many spirited and strange avians in a country where birds reign supreme. The only native land mammals are two types of bat, so New Zealand’s birds, which evolved eccentrically before human and predator arrival, have become beloved national symbols.
“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, but we do have kakapo and kiwi,” Vercoe said. “It’s a real New Zealand duty to save these birds.”
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds an egg for candling of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member checks the size of a Kakapo egg on Whenua Hou Island, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, a Dept. of Conservation staff member holds Kakapa chicks Tiwhiri A1 and Tiwhiri A2 on Anchor Island Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 2026. (Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
In this photo provided by the Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand, Kakapo, Kohengi sits with her three eggs, on Anchor Island, Pukenui, New Zealand, Feb. 3, 2026. (Andrew Digby/Dept. of Conservation, New Zealand via AP)
