PNG’S rare large pigeons not extinct
SCIENTISTS CAPTURE IMAGES OF BLACK-NAPED PHEASANT-PIGEON LOST TO SCIENCE FOR 140 YEARS
IT’S not extinct! This perfectly describes the findings of a team of scientists and conservationists, who rediscovered the elusive black-naped pheasant-pigeon, a large, grounddwelling pigeon that only lives on rugged Fergusson Island in the D’entrecasteaux Archipelago off eastern Papua New Guinea.
The black-naped pheasantpigeon has been lost to science for 140 years before scientists finally captured images of the bird—that concluded that it is still very much alive.
Caught on camera
THE rare bird was caught on a camera set up by the team as part of the month-long search on Fergusson.
It was the first time the longlost bird has been documented since 1882 when it was first described.
The camera images revealed that like other pheasant pigeons, the black-naped pheasant-pigeon has a broad and laterally compressed tail, which, along with its size, makes it closely resemble a pheasant.
Little known species
THE black-naped pheasant-pigeon is a very little-known species. Ornithologists, however, believe that the population on Fergusson is very small and decreasing.
“When we collected the camera traps, I figured out there was less than a 1-percent chance of getting a photo of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon,” Jordan Boersma, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell Lab of Ornithology and co-leader of the expedition team, said in a news release.
“Then as I was scrolling through the photos, I was stunned by this photo of this bird walking right past our camera,” he said.
Month-long expedition
THE full expedition team consisted of Boersma; Jason Gregg, conservation biologist and co-leader of the expedition team; Doka Nason and Serena Ketaloya from Porotona village; Elimo Malesa from Basima village; Bulisa Iova from Papua New Guinea National Museum; Cosmo Le Breton from University of Oxford; and John C. Mittermeier from American Bird Conservancy.
The expedition was funded by a grant from Cosmo Le Breton to the American Bird Conservancy and the Search for Lost Birds.
The expedition team—which included local Papua New Guineans working with Papua New Guinea National Museum, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy—arrived on Fergusson in early September 2022.
They spent a month traveling around the island, interviewing local community members to identify locations to set up camera traps in hopes of finding the pheasant-pigeon.
The steep, mountainous terrain on Fergusson Island made searching for the bird extremely challenging.
Help from hunters
THE team said they got help from local hunters who knew about the rare bird they were looking for on the island.
The hunters have a name for the black-naped pheasant-pigeon and also where to find it.
“It wasn’t until we reached villages on the western slope of Mount Kilkerran that we started meeting hunters who had seen and heard the pheasant-pigeon,” Gregg narrated.
“We became more confident about the local name of the bird, which is ‘Auwo,’ and felt like we were getting closer to the core habitat of where the black-naped pheasant-pigeon lives,” he added.
Breakthrough lead
LOCAL hunter Augustin Gregory in Duda Ununa village, west of Mount Kilkerran, provided a breakthrough lead on where to find the bird.
He reported seeing the pheasant-pigeon on multiple occasions in an area with steep ridges and valleys, and described hearing the bird’s distinctive calls, which is similar to other species of pheasant-pigeons.
A total of 12 camera traps have been placed on the slopes of Mount Kilkerran, Fergusson’s highest mountain.
The team also deployed an additional eight cameras in locations, where local hunters had reported seeing the pheasant-pigeon in the past.
“When we finally found the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, it was during the final hours of the expedition,” said Nason, a member of the team who set up the camera trap that eventually photographed the lost bird. “When I saw the photos, I was incredibly excited.”
Extremely rare
THE team’s findings suggested that the pheasant-pigeon is likely to be extremely rare. The rugged and inaccessible forest where they rediscovered the species could be the last stronghold for the black-naped pheasant-pigeon on Fergusson.
The expedition was supported by American Bird Conservancy and the Search for Lost Birds, a collaboration between Birdlife International, American Bird Conservancy, and Re:wild.
The Search for Lost Birds identified the pheasant-pigeon for an expedition after a global review revealed it was one of a few bird species that have been lost to science for more than a century.
Adult birds
SOUGHT for information about the bird, Mittermeier, director of the lost birds program at American Bird Conservancy and co-leader of the expedition, told the Businessmirror via e-mail on November 21 that both of the pheasant pigeons documented by the team using the camera traps look like adults.
“Once they reach adulthood, most bird species are impossible to age so we don’t know how old these birds are. The males and females look the same as far as we know,” he said.
He said the bird was only on camera for a few seconds.
“The timestamp between the first and last photos from the September 28 images is the total time the bird was in front of the camera in that instance,” he said.
“With such brief documentation, it’s hard to guess at what the bird was doing when it was photographed. It may have just been walking past,” he added.
Very little-known species
ACCORDING to Mittermeier, the description from 140 years ago provided very little information and nothing on the population of the species.
“The description simply said that ‘two individuals were collected on an extremely rugged ridge.’ So we don’t really know what the population was like then. Since it was only documented on this one occasion we can guess that it was probably quite rare, but it’s hard to be sure. The pheasant-pigeons may occasionally get hunted by raptors, but overall the adults probably have few natural predators,” he said.
However, he also said that this may also be changing as introduced predators like cats and rats have arrived on Fergusson.
“Again though it’s hard to know, we have extremely little information,” he added. “We can guess that people probably have hunted pheasant pigeons in the past, but this isn’t documented.”
Hunted? By cats and rats, maybe
EXPEDITION team co-leader Boersma said the black-naped pheasant-pigeon is not traditionally hunted for food or game by local hunters.
He said when they found local hunters, who were familiar with the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, they asked them if they hunted the species.
“In all but a few cases the answer was ‘no,’ and those who had hunted the species had only claimed to have harvested once,” he said.
“We also asked if they heard from their parents or other elders in the community that this species was hunted and they all said ‘no.’ So we didn’t find any evidence that this species was a major protein source now or in the past. It’s still possible that hunting could have caused a decline in the species a long time ago, but we have no evidence pointing to this,” he explained.
Interestingly, Boersma said cats could be a major introduced predator for adults of the species.
He also said that they suspect that rats would raid the nests of these birds, perhaps leading to their population decline.
“We suspect this species is similar to mainland species who lay one egg in a ground nest, thus, making them especially susceptible to depredation by rats,” Boersma pointed out.
Way forward
TO protect and conserve the blacknaped pheasant-pigeon and save it from extinction, Mittermeier said the next step is to learn more about the species.
“We need to learn more about what the population of the pheasant-pigeon is, what threats it faces and we need to work with local communities to learn how we can collaborate with them to protect the bird,” he said.