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Expedition fails to find evidence of extinct duck

17^th December 2007

Scientists at The Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust are putting together an emergency action plan for a duck so rare it was believed extinct until last winter.
Dr Glyn Young recently participated in an expedition into Madagascar aimed at finding further populations of the Madagascar pochard – a medium-sized diving duck.
The duck had been considered extinct by many authorities for more than ten years, until last winter’s sighting of nine adults and four juveniles.

Dr Young, who works within Durrell’s ornithology department and has conducted research on all Madagascar’s ducks since 1989, said: “As soon as the bird was rediscovered, I was invited to Madagascar to establish how secure these birds were and whether there were any immediate threats. The population was in an extremely isolated location which boded well for its security.”

According to Dr Young the ducks were found in a slightly different habitat and in a different location to what had been expected, sparking new hopes that there might be similar, undiscovered populations in Madagascar.

He said: “The Madagascar pochard is extremely secretive and little is known about its life-cycle and behaviour. It was believed that they preferred marshy lakes with lots of reeds and emergent vegetation but the newly discovered population was found in a steep sided volcanic lake with little shoreline marsh and reeds.”

This year’s expedition was aimed at locating further populations of the bird, but sadly four weeks of surveying Madagascar’s remote hill-sides yielded no further sightings.

Dr Young added: “The failure to find any other populations of the duck highlights the need for immediate conservation intervention to save this species. The Durrell team will be working closely with other conservation organisations over the coming weeks to develop a strategy that will stop this species disappearing off the face of the earth.”

The Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust works with a range of endangered animals in Madagascar, running captive breeding programmes and working closely with the people of Madagascar to help preserve important habitats. They are currently running successful conservation programmes for Meller’s duck and the Madagascar teal which, like the Madagascar pochard, are found only on Madagascar.

Research on the Madagascar pochard and conservation of the site is being led by The Peregrine Fund in collaboration with Madagascar’s Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests as well as a number of conservation organisations including Durrell and Conservation International.

…end…

Issued for: Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
Issued by: Hare Carding – tel: 023 9232 4528 contact Angela Chadwick

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