ZCZC
BFF-22
INDONESIA-ANIMAL-BIRD
It’s alive! Black-browed Babbler emerges after 170 years
JAKARTA, Feb 25, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – A bird last seen more than 170 years ago
in the rainforests of Borneo has been rediscovered, amazing conservationists
who have long assumed it was extinct.
The Black-browed Babbler has only ever been documented once — when it was
first described by scientists around 1848 — eluding all subsequent efforts
to find it.
But late last year, two men in Indonesian Borneo saw a bird they didn’t
recognise and snapped photos of it before releasing the palm-sized creature
back into the forest, according to Global Wildlife Conservation.
Ornithologists were astounded to find that the Black-browed Babbler was
alive and well, despite not having been seen since before Charles Darwin
published “On the Origin of Species”.
“It was a bit like a ‘Eureka!’ moment,” said Panji Gusti Akbar, lead author
of a paper on the discovery published Thursday in the journal BirdingASIA.
“This bird is often called ‘the biggest enigma in Indonesian ornithology.’
It’s mind-blowing to think that it’s not extinct and it’s still living in
these lowland forests.”
Little is known about the creature with brown and grey feathers, which has
been “missing” longer than any other Asian bird, according to the paper.
Researchers hoped to go back to the area where it was recently spotted, but
Covid-19 travel restrictions could slow the effort.
“There is now a critical window of opportunity for conservationists to
secure these forests to protect the babbler and other species,” said Ding Li
Yong, a co-author on the paper and a Singapore-based conservationist with
BirdLife International.
More than 150 species of birds around the world are considered “lost” with
no confirmed sightings in the past decade, conservationists say.
“Discoveries like this are incredible and give us so much hope that it’s
possible to find other species that have been lost to science for decades or
longer,” said Barney Long, Global Wildlife Conservation’s senior director of
species conservation.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1318 hrs