‘Rediscovered’ after 100 years, Gurney’s pitta is in peril once again
The tiny, vibrantly colored bird, first described from the Tanintharyi region of Myanmar in 1875, was thought to have gone extinct when it wasn’t recorded by scientists for more than a century. But in 1986, researchers found a population of Gurney’s pitta (Hydrornis gurneyi) in Thailand. Then in 2003, the IUCN downlisted the bird from critically endangered to endangered after a preliminary survey estimated the population in Myanmar was at least double the 11 pairs previously assumed. For a while, things looked hopeful for the pitta.
Today, however, the Thai population of Gurney’s pitta is all but wiped out, researchers say. And the Myanmar population is also in trouble, thanks to deforestation clearing one of the bird’s last remaining habitats, a new study has found.
Named after the British politician and amateur ornithologist John Henry Gurney in 1843, the pitta is locally known as the black-belly bird in Thai (นกแต้วแร้วท้องดำ). In addition to its distinctive black stomach, the attractive male pitta has lemon-yellow sides and a crown of bright blue plumage — features that earned it the title of the “most wanted bird in Thailand” in 2008 from birdwatchers.
The pitta’s bright plumage has also made it a victim of the international pet trade. Prior to the 1980s, when the scientific community thought the species was extinct, animal dealers reported to scientists that up to 50 pittas were being sold annually into the pet trade. The researchers used this information to find the Thai population in 1986.
“Hunting and poaching remains a significant problem,” Anuj Jain, the Asia coordinator for extinction prevention at the U.K.-based BirdLife International, who was not involved in the new study, told Mongabay in an email. “Local villagers hunt for subsistence but armed Thai poachers enter the area to poach indiscriminately.”
Gurney’s pitta is typically not a poacher’s main target, Jain added, but since it’s a ground-dwelling bird feeding mostly on earthworms, it can get trapped in ground nets intended for other species like pangolins.
But poaching isn’t the only threat to the pitta’s existence. Deforestation, particularly to make way for oil palm plantations, has been wiping out the bird’s habitat. In the Tanintharyi region of Myanmar, at least 10 percent of the total land area has been set aside for oil palm cultivation.
In the latest study, researchers found that in 1999, when oil palm expansion into the region began, there was around 3,225 square kilometers (1,245 square miles) of potential habitat for the pitta in south Tanintharyi, an area the size of Yosemite National Park. By 2017, there was only 656 km2 (253 mi2) of suitable forest habitat left — a decrease of 80%.
“The major cause of habitat loss in Myanmar — as previously in Thailand — has been the expansion of commercial plantations,” Nay Myo Shwe, lead author of the study, told Mongabay in an email. “Especially oil palm, which targets and clears the lowland forest habitat on which this species depends.”
