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Lost presumed dead: The search for the most wanted birds in the world

The Search for Lost Birds project has already tracked down two species on its top 10 list. But is this focus on a handful of potentially extinct birds really good for conservation?

By Penny Sarchet

15 May 2023

South Island Kokako, Callaeas cinerea, collected no data, New Zealand.

The South Island kōkako, last officially sighted in 1967

Te Papa (OR.010842) CC BY 4.0

IT WAS the first day of 2023 and John Mittermeier was feeling dispirited. He and his colleagues had been in Madagascar for 10 days searching for a bird last seen more than two decades ago. Long treks looking for its native forest habitat had revealed swathes of land cleared for agriculture and vanilla production. They had faced rain and leeches and Mittermeier had been ill much of the time. And, in two days, they would start heading home.

The team had just moved to a new location and Mittermeier had awoken full of hope, but he soon realised that the environment there was also degraded. “I went from a high of anticipation to ‘this is a disaster’,” he says. By 9 am he was walking back to camp. Then it happened. “Boom! There was a dusky tetraka.”

This little green bird with its yellow throat and eye rings is so special that it makes the “most-wanted” list of the Search for Lost Birds. The initiative, launched in 2021, aims to use the excitement that elusive species inspire to direct the world’s army of birdwatchers, researchers and conservationists to seek out avians lost to science. It even offers financial support for some searches.

PHOTO: A dusky Tetraka, the second species to be rediscovered by the Search for Lost Birds. (Photo by John C. Mittermeier) PHOTO: A dusky Tetraka, the second species to be rediscovered by the Search for Lost Birds. (Photo by John C. Mittermeier) The dusky tetraka, a small olive and yellow-throated bird that hops around on the ground and has eluded ornithologists for 24 years, was rediscovered by an expedition team searching the tropical forests of northeastern Madagascar. The expedition team, led by The Peregrine Fund?s Madagascar Program, found the species in two different remote sites; one on the Masoala peninsula and another near Andapa in late December 2022 and early January. The last documented sighting of the dusky tetraka was in 1999, making it one of the top 10 most wanted lost birds by the Search for Lost Birds, a collaboration between Re:wild, American Bird Conservancy and BirdLife International. Added by Devin Murphy Copyright John C. Mittermeier

The dusky tetraka

John C. Mittermeier

Looking for long-lost species helps conservationists decide where their focus should be, says Christina Biggs at conservation organisation Re:wild. Finding them can bring hope. “We live in a time of apocalyptic climate-change fatigue,” she says. …

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