Guns, predators and deforestation are pushing Samoa's national bird to extinction

Amber-Leigh Woolf 16:09, Sep 10 2019

Wellington Chocolate Factory co-founder Gabe Davidson talks about making Save the Manumea chocolate.

Kiwis are being called on to help save the national bird of Samoa from extinction - there's fewer than 200 left. 

The elusive Manumea is rarely sighted in Samoan forests due to hunting, deforestation and predators, and leaders are calling for a hunting ban to save them. 

Samoa's High Commissioner to New Zealand, Leasi Papali'i Tommy Scanlan, said the people of Samoa loved the Manumea like New Zealanders love the kiwi. 

In the 1990s, there were about 7000 Manumea - now there's fewer than 150.

"If it becomes extinct it will be a very sad day for us." 

In July, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern launched a Save the Manumea campaign in Apia with the Deputy Prime Minister of Samoa Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, and the Wellington Chocolate Factory is producing a unique chocolate bar fundraiser for the conservation effort.  

The Wellington Chocolate Factory was donated cacao from the Savai'i Koko plantation to make 700 limited edition Save the Manumea bars.

The Save the Manumea campaign calls for a ban on hunting birds as  Manumea are being accidentally shot by people hunting the Lupe, the Pacific Pigeon. 

Pigeon snaring was once a distinguished sport among Samoa's high chiefs, but Papali'i said tradition hads to change to save the Manumea. 

"When they go hunting in the heavy forest and see the big bird, they can't distinguish between the pigeon and the Manumea, and they'll shoot." 

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NZ joins Samoa campaign to save manumea national bird

4:44 am on 30 July 2019 

Samoa's campaign to save its national bird, the manumea, was jointly launched on the weekend by New Zealand's Prime Minister.

Jacinda Ardern joined Samoa's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, Fiame Naomi Mata'afa, for the launch in Apia.

It's estimated that there are no more than 200 manumea in the forests of Samoa, the only country where this species of pigeon is found.

Speaking at the launch, Fiame said the manumea had significant value for Samoa's culture and heritage.

"But many of our people will be unaware of this rather shy and cryptic bird which is now classified by the International Union of the Conservation of Nature as critically endangered and is on the red list of endangered species of 2018."

"There is also some poignancy that our manumea is one of the last living relatives of the dodo, a bird that has been extinct since 1681 but remains an icon of global conservation efforts," she said.

The deputy Prime Minister said the manumea the campaign was designed to do more than simply raise awareness of the endangered bird.

She has called on Samoa's public to consider changing the actions that many are taking which put the national bird and other biodiversity at risk.

Fiamē has encouraged local villages to help the ministry of environment by advising local pigeon hunters to support the campaign for Samoa's national bird.

A manumea mural was also launched last Saturday with a painting of the national bird on the eastern wall of the New Zealand High Commission office in Apia.

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Caught in the crossfire: little dodo nears extinction

Illegal pigeon hunting across Samoa is risking the extinction of the country’s national bird: the little dodo or manumea. Will this little-known island pigeon suffer the same fate as its namesake? 

Jeremy Hance

Mon 9 Apr 2018 08.40 BSTLast modified on Mon 9 Apr 2018 23.13 BST

Nearly two hundred years after the extinction of the dodo, Sir William Jardin – a Scottish naturalist and bird-aficionado – described another odd, bulky, island pigeon. From the island of Samoa, this one was distinguished by a massive, curving bill that sported tooth-like serrations on its lower mandible. Given the strangeness of the creature, Jardine set it in its own genus and dubbed it Didunculus – the little dodo. Genetic evidence has since confirmed that the tooth-billed pigeon – or little dodo – is one of the closest living relatives of its long-deceased namesake. Today, the little dodo is at the very precipice of extinction, but it remains nearly as cryptic and little known as it did when Jardin gave it a scientific name in 1845. 

The little dodo “is the last surviving species in its genus,” Rebecca Stirnemann said. “The Fijian and Tongan species [of the little dodo] are both extinct. It is the national bird of Samoa and appears in many of the stories often in association with chiefs.”

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Samoa's national bird under threat

6:01 am on 2 October 2017 

Samoa's National Conservation Society is pinning hits hopes on an international awareness campaign to save, the manumea, Samoa's rare and elusive national bird.

The Society has teamed up with Auckland Zoo and Samoa's Ministry of Natural Resources, and a UK team to save the manumea.

Endemic to Samoa, the manumea is a unique tooth-billed pigeon and faces threat of extinction due to deforestation, the arrival of rats and cats and other human development on its island home.  

The President of the Samoa Conservation Society, James Atherton, told Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor, how rare the manumea is.

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On edge of extinction, could drones and technology save the Little Dodo?

Almost nothing is known about the little dodo, a large, archaic, pigeon-like bird found only on the islands of Samoa. Worse still, this truly bizarre bird is on the verge of extinction, following the fate of its much more famous relative, the dodo bird. Recently, conservationists estimated that fewer than 200 survived on the island and maybe far fewer; frustratingly, sightings of the bird have been almost non-existent in recent years. But conservation efforts were buoyed this December when researchers stumbled on a juvenile little dodo hanging out in a tree. Not only was this an important sighting of a nearly-extinct species, but even more so it proved the species is still successfully breeding. In other words: there is still time to save the species from extinction so long as conservationists are able to raise the funds needed. 

Read more at 

Tooth-billed pigeon sighted for first time in 10 years

January 2014: One of the world’s least-known and rarest birds, the Tooth-billed Pigeon has been sighted on the Samoan island of Savai’i by researchers.The young Tooth-billed Pigeon Didunculus strigirostris, was photographed by a team from the Samoan Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE), and is the first confirmed sighting in almost a decade.The odd-looking tooth-billed pigeon or manumea, as it is locally known, is endemic to Samoa and is the country’s national bird. BirdLife lists it as Endangered due to its small, fragmented range and population. It has declined rapidly over the last 20 years as a result of hunting and habitat loss.

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The Little Dodo of Samoa

The Mauritian dodo is the iconic emblem for both island conservation and extinction, sadly one of the birds lost from the Mascarene archipelago. One might often wonder how this strange bird could have originally been descended from a pigeon, but in Samoa we find the tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris), otherwise known as the little dodo, or locally the Manumea. This strange pigeon is the only member of its genus (a measure of evolutionary uniqueness), and is also the national bird of Samoa.

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