15 Feb
2019
The Pink
Pigeon is no longer Endangered. But how did conservationists achieve this, and
is it sustainable? Dr Vikash Tatayah, Conservation Director, Mauritian Wildlife
Foundation (BirdLife Partner) reports from the field…
Last
year, one of Mauritius’ best-loved birds hit a milestone that delighted
the conservation world. In the 2018 Red List update, the Pink Pigeon Nesoenas mayeri was
downlisted from Endangered to Vulnerable, building upon the success of 2000,
when it was downlisted from Critically Endangered to Endangered. But
behind the scenes of this happy news lies over 30 years of gruelling
devotion, with conservationists tackling the numerous threats to the pigeon
from every possible angle in their bid to bring it back from the brink.
For a
while, we were worried it might go the same way as its fellow Mauritian
endemic, the Dodo Raphus cucullatus. An even closer relative, the Reunion
Pigeon Nesoenas duboisi, went extinct on the neighbouring
Reunion Island in the late 18th century thanks to introduced cats and rats. The
Pink Pigeon now holds the unenviable title of the last native pigeon in the
whole Mascarene archipelago.
Predictably,
it was the arrival of humans that heralded the Pink Pigeon’s decline. The
species was once widely distributed across Mauritius, but by the 19th
century its population had become extremely fragmented and confined to the
upland forests. Humans had destroyed native vegetation to the extent that only
1.5% of the original, good-quality forest remained. They also hunted the plump
bird and introduced a panoply of predators such as Black Rat Rattus rattus, Small Indian
Mongoose Herpestes auropunctatus and
Crab-eating Macaque Macaca
fascicularis.
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