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        Discussion Area 討論區 >> Conservation 自然保育 >>  Newly discovered owl species
        
(Message started by: Project Officer on Jun 25^th, 2003, 11:42pm)

Title: Newly discovered owl species
Post by Project Officer on Jun 25^th, 2003, 11:42pm

For your information, BirdLife International press release dated 24 June 2003
(http://www.birdlife.org/news/pr/2003/06/pernambuco_owl.html)

Survey team captures only footage of newly-discovered owl species
Cambridge, UK, 24 June 2003 – A BirdLife International survey team has been the first to film a newly-discovered species of pygmy-owl. [1,2]

In November 2001, a team including BirdLife’s Head of Communications, Adrian Long, surveyed the highly-threatened Atlantic Forest in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco and were the first to record the owl whilst studies were already underway on two specimens collected long before to confirm them as a new species. It is only now that the work, undertaken by José Maria Cardoso da Silva of Conservation International, Brazil, Galileu Coelho of the Federal University of Pernambuco and Luiz Pedreira Gonzaga from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, has been published and the newly-described owl given a name. [3] The Pernambuco Pygmy-owl Glaucidium mooreorum has been named after the devoted conservationists, Intel founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty.

The future of Pernambuco Pygmy-owl is far from assured, with the researchers instantly recommending it for classification as ‘Critically Endangered’. [4] The BirdLife International team’s sighting was in fragmented forest on a privately-owned sugarcane plantation, and the bird’s only other home is the tiny, 4.8 sq. km Saltinho Biological Reserve.

The description of this owl highlights BirdLife International’s quest to protect the Atlantic forest, one of the most biodiverse yet threatened ecosystems in the world, particularly the so-called Pernambuco Centre area, where the Pernambuco Pygmy-owl lives, and which, in 1995 only had 4% of its original forest cover left. The Pernambuco Centre is biologically diverse even by Atlantic Forest standards, with 39 endemic bird species and subspecies and the largest number of threatened bird species in Brazil, 18 including Pernambuco Pygmy-owl, and Alagoas Curussow Mitu mitu, a species now Extinct in the Wild.

However, the little-known forests in the Pernambuco Centre are severely impacted by people with forest clearance even continuing in ‘protected’ areas. In Murici, an area in neighbouring Alagoas State which supports the most threatened birds in the Americas and is considered one of the 15 most Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in the Atlantic Forest, BirdLife International and the Sociedade Nordestina de Ecologia are assisting the Brazilian Government to set up an ecological station. The establishment of ecological corridors connecting fragments in the region is essential to protect the isolated populations of species that survive in some 1,400 forest patches. [5]

“This owl’s discovery will probably change the assessment of the importance of this site, which is already designated an IBA with four threatened species,” says Jaqueline Goerck, BirdLife International’s Brazil Program Manager. “We have identified all the IBAs in the region, and just in Pernambuco State there are nine. The next step is to survey these for the species to assess whether it is present in others, and whether the owl could be protected within these sites.” [6]

Adrian Long, describing the survey team’s encounter with the pygmy-owl said “We found this owl through following up on alarm calls of other birds that were mobbing it. We saw it perched for more than 15 minutes as it ate a cicada. Luiz Gonzaga was familiar with pygmy-owl taxonomy so was able to confirm that no other pygmy-owls showing this type of plumage were found in this part of Brazil. We went back a few more times to the area but had no more sightings within the small forest fragment.”

The Pernambuco Pygmy-owl differs from the two geographically closest species, the Amazonian Pygmy-owl G. hardyi and the Least Pygmy-owl G. minutissimum, in its colouration, body shape and song.

For further information, please contact Richard Thomas at BirdLife International in Cambridge, UK: tel. +44 (0)1223 279813; email: richard.thomas@birdlife.org.uk

Interviews can be arranged with Adrian Long.