One of the World’s Rarest Birds Has Been Reintroduced to the Wild in Madagascar

Disir

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For 15 years, researchers believed that the duck had gone extinct. But in 2006, biologists stumbled across a small group of 25 pochards living on a remote lake. Now, as the BBC reports, the story of the hardy pochard has taken another promising turn: 21 ducks that were raised in captivity have been released on a lake in northern Madagascar.

After rediscovering the birds more than ten years ago, conservationists collected three clutches of eggs from the wild population and ushered them into a captive breeding program. The few remaining wild pochards were reproducing, but survival rates among their young were dismal. Pushed out of their marshy habitats, the birds had settled in a heavily forested volcanic lake that was too cold for them and too deep. Madagascar pochards hunt by diving; without shallow areas for the ducklings to feed, most died within weeks.

Breeding efforts were more successful for the ducks in captivity. Experts have reared 114 birds to date, according to the Guardian’s Patrick Barkham. A few years ago, they began to make plans for releasing some of the pochards into the wild, but finding a place where the birds would stand a fighting chance was no easy task.

Madagascar’s wetlands have been heavily degraded. A 2017 survey of 37 wetlands in the sprawling island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa found that most had been cleared for agriculture, which in turn “severely impacted freshwater biodiversity.” One of the major threats to the pochard’s survival came in the form of non-native fish species, introduced to the ducks’ habitat for farming purposes. Carp, for instance, disturbed the water and made it difficult for the ducks to find food. Tilapia gobbled up the invertebrates that pochards eat, further fueling their decline.


Read more: One of the World’s Rarest Birds Has Been Reintroduced to the Wild in Madagascar | Smart News | Smithsonian

And as long as the aviaries are available they should be fine.
 

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