PARIS: Conservationists on Wednesday celebrated the first sighting in 24 years of the sunny tetraca, a yellow-throated songbird from Madagascar that zoologists had feared for the worst.
An expedition to remote areas of the island nation confirmed two recent sightings of the bird.
Scientists also learned something about the tiny bird’s behavior that may help explain how it escaped notice for so long, even though it is extremely rare.
The last documented sighting of the sunny tetraca, in 1999, was in the rainforests of northeastern Madagascar, one of the world’s most diverse biodiversity hotspots, with hundreds of unique vertebrate species.
In December, an international team of researchers led by the US-based Peregrine Fund drove 40 hours and hiked for half a day to the last sighting of the warbler-like bird.
They discovered that much of the forest had been destroyed and converted to farms for vanilla production, even though the area was officially protected.
After eight days, team member John Mittermeier, director of the Lost Bird Program at the American Bird Conservancy, finally spotted one leaping from the thick undergrowth to the ground near a rocky riverbed and snapped a photo.
“If misty tetraca always prefer areas near rivers, this may help explain why the species has been overlooked for so long,” he said.
‘Insufficient data’
“Tropical jungles are all about listening to birds chirping, and so you naturally avoid spending time near flowing rivers where you can’t hear anything.”
Another dusty tetraca located by another team also spent most of its time in dense vegetation near the river, presumably searching for insects and other prey in the moist subsoil.
“Now that we’ve found the dusty tetraca and better understand its habitat, we can look for it in other parts of Madagascar,” said Lille-Arison René D., director of the Madagascar program at The Peregrine Fund. Roland said.
The bird is on the Top Ten Most Wanted Missing Birds list, a collaboration between Re:wild, the American Bird Conservancy and BirdLife International, all campaign partners.
More than half of Madagascar’s birds — about 115 species — are endemic, meaning they are found nowhere else.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List lists more than 40 bird species of the island as threatened with extinction.
Dusty tetraca — aka Craslia tenebrosa — is not classified due to lack of data.
The main drivers of biodiversity loss in Madagascar are agriculture, habitat destruction, invasive species, climate change and deforestation for hunting.
According to preliminary research, about 40 percent of the island’s original forests were lost between 1950 and 2000.