"Chi-yo-ko!" I call, flapping my way from reed to reed. "Chi-yo-ko!"
"Quiet," hiss the reeds eventually. "And get lost."
"Chiyoko, you got all the nice people worried about you again," I tell her, and she hisses hard enough to mistake for an arbok. Chiyoko is old, old enough she's everybody's grandma or great-grandma or great-great-great, you get the idea, and like pretty much everybody in her generation she's also mean and paranoid even to kids like me who she's known since I was waddling around shedding baby fluff, and that's nothing to how nasty she is about the nice people.
"So get lost! I know they're tracking you and they'll come here when they see you sticking around!"
"They wouldn't have to track other people and then wade around to find you in person if you didn't keep taking your radio collar off," I tell her. "I know they're all big and they knock the reeds about when they come looking, but it's not fair to get mad at them for it when they're only doing it because you're 'thwarting less invasive surveillance methods'. They've been taking care of you for decades! They just want to know everybody's doing okay. You can't hold grudges forever."
"Ren Ren Ren," she hisses.
"Yeah?"
"Using names from them. Getting names from them."
"Ren's a nice name they gave me because they like us and don't think we're just numbers. Chiyoko's a better name too! It's a reminder of how they think you're so important and special!"
"Thinking only about the lotus flower and never the muddy lotus roots," she says, mad and weird as always. "Carry around shears, why don't you, make it easier for them to snip your fool head off."
"I carry a stalk, from the special stalk garden the nice people made for us because our plants don't grow well around here anymore and they know we need them," I point out. "And the part of a lotus that matters is the beautiful flower that grows after a lot of hard work, and that's what I am, the result of everybody's hard work!" But she's not going to listen. I flap up and fly in a circle around where she's lurking a bunch of times, like painting a radio bullseye target on her paranoid little crazy hole, so it'll be easy for the nice people to check on her later. I heard them saying they're worried about her breathing and maybe having a lung infection even because her hissing sounded deeper than usual last time they visited her.
I know there were other kinds of people around before. I know there was, you know, the thing, the fad, the nice people talk about it, how us farfetch'd were already struggling from losing lots of estuaries we live in to development and changes in the plants in the estuaries left because of lots of confusing reasons they still don't understand for sure, and then suddenly we were on TV and in magazines and that brought us to tons of people's attention and we got practically wiped out within a year because nobody's realized how rare we already were getting.
But they realized it was wrong! In a way, it was kind of lucky, because maybe if it hadn't been sudden the nice people wouldn't have noticed in time. And they got the last ones that were left, like Chiyoko, and protected and fed them and collected all the eggs to make sure every baby survived, they made laws protecting us, and they grew lots and lots of plants for us and let us take our pick of the very best ones whenever we want so we didn't have to search or fight over them anymore. They may have made mistakes but they've worked so hard to undo all that, and now there's lots of us again.
In fact, I heard them say the program's doing so well, and we're doing so well, that there's enough of us and we're recovering better than they thought, that we might get to the next stage sooner than they'd hoped we could, and one that just the guys like me will get to do!
I can't wait to take part in the farfetch'd hunt. I wonder what we'll be hunting?
Red/Green/FireRed: It always walks about with a plant stalk clamped in its beak. The stalk is used for building its nest.
So this is actually the very oldest information we get about farfetch'd - or, perhaps second oldest, because this doesn't actually match up with the original Red/Green sprite, which shows the stalk tucked under the wing. It's only in Blue we get a farfetch'd holding a stalk with its beak, something that then holds true until DP, when it gains feather-fingers and starts actually grabbing the stalk like a hand in the manner of Donald Duck.
Blue: The sprig of green onions it holds is its weapon. It is used much like a metal sword.
Silver: If it eats the plant stick it carries as emergency rations, it runs off in search of a new stick.
I don't think these things contradict. If this is food, shelter, and protection, it makes sense farfetch'd are so dependent on them. And indeed...
Gold: If anyone tries to disturb where the essential plant sticks grow, it uses its own stick to thwart them.
Next,
Yellow: Lives where reedy plants grow. They are rarely seen, so it's thought their numbers are decreasing.
This would somewhat suggest that the issue could be habitat destruction. But of course, this is a duck carrying its own garnish - the real reason they're rare is right there in the sprite. This is elaborated on in the Japanese pokedex book: They always carry a plant stalk for crafting their nest when walking. A recent study also revealed the stalk to be food for emergencies. Several years ago, the mass media reported on the deliciousness of cooking farfetch'd with their stalk. This news spread nationwide, resulting in a massive decline in their population."
So we can probably put together that first there's a big rush for a formerly obscure creature, then people start to realize there's a decline but because little was known about them, it takes a while. That said, this doesn't mean they aren't also facing other problems - if they were already rarely seen, after all, they might've been in moderate decline for an unknown time before this.
Ruby/Sapphire: FARFETCH'D is always seen with a stick from a plant of some sort. Apparently, there are good sticks and bad sticks. This POKÉMON has been known to fight with others over sticks.
And we do get the additional information that not only do they rely on a particular plant, but this is a limited resource and farfetch'd are territorial as a result.
Crystal: In order to prevent their extinction, more people have made an effort to breed these POKÉMON.
The second gen games are explicitly three years after the first ones, and going from "it's thought their numbers are decreasing" to needing to prevent outright extinction suggests this happened catastrophically fast. However, it's also the last time this concern gets brought up, so it sounds like the breeding program went a lot more smoothly than the lapras one, which has entry after entry about being on the verge of extinction until Sun/Moon, which take place around a decade later.
Anyway did you know the backbone of animal conservation funding is hunters?