Neglect the Kardashians. For practically a decade, the one ‘well-known households’ researchers Jörn Theuerkauf and Henri Bloc have been obsessive about are the 15 households of birds they’re fastidiously monitoring by a sanctuary in New Caledonia as they monitor their conservation efforts.
The birds in query are kagus — also referred to as cagous — flamboyant, blueish-gray birds that may solely be discovered on that exact island nation within the South Pacific.
The kagu is peculiar for a lot of causes. It may possibly fly, nevertheless it’s considered “practically flightless.” It primarily toddles round on the bottom, nevertheless it does prolong its wings and flips up its trademark “mohawk” crest for mating shows.
In addition they bark like a canine — a sound extra akin to a Yorkie “yap” than a Rottweiler “woof” — and partake in morning duets, or as one zoologist famous, “screaming challenges.”
Thought-about some of the distinctive birds on this planet, kagus have been beloved by the Indigenous Kanak tribes of New Caledonia for numerous years.
Sadly, after Europeans colonized the island in 1853 on the behest of Emperor Napoleon III, the kagu was not worshiped. Over the following century, they had been trapped, domesticated, and compelled to cope with a flurry of invasive animals introduced on to the island by colonizers, together with pigs, rats, canines, and cats.
At present, kagus are nonetheless below grave risk from these predators. For years, rats and pigs have continued raiding and decimating kagu nests, whereas stray cats and canines prey on the birds themselves.
“These invasive mammals practically precipitated the outright extinction of the species in 2017,” wildlife rehabilitation specialist Tim Mihocik wrote for The Revelator, “when two stray canines entered the Parc des Grandes Fougeres wildlife refuge of New Caledonia and went on an unparalleled killing spree.”
Theuerkauf and Bloc had been there on that horrific day, once they discovered 30 kagus lifeless within the sanctuary. In 2020, the same occasion precipitated a ban of canines — even these on leashes — from coming into the park, and a program was carried out to curb the stray canine inhabitants, which had grown wildly uncontrolled.
However Theuerkauf and Bloc’s conservation work — by the Nature Warden brigade — has not been in useless.
As nationwide concern for the kagus has grown, the group has constantly spent a decade recording the chook’s behaviors, establishing path cameras by nests, and monitoring their restoration.
And the researchers have been blown away by their progress.
“The inhabitants has in all probability tripled since 2017,” Theuerkauf informed The Guardian. “We’re subsequently quickly on the most variety of birds doable within the park.”
When that most is reached, the kagus received’t be at a loss. Jean-Marc Meriot operates Blue River Provincial Park (also referred to as le Parc Provincial de la Rivière Bleue) — a Nationwide Park about two hours away from Theuerkauf and Bloc’s sanctuary — and has the house for potential future generations to proceed thriving.
In that park, 60 birds had been recorded there in 1984. Now, Marriott estimates that that quantity has grown to 1,000.
“We now have forest areas with new pairs of kagus,” he informed The Guardian.
“The kagu inhabitants is doing very effectively, it’s continuously increasing and issues couldn’t be higher.”
Header picture by way of Frank Liebig / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)
