What about Pink pigeons?

 

In my previous blog I was telling you that some species in Mauritius have gone extinct due to their forest disappearing or being hunted for food-like the Dodo and the Blue pigeon.

 

Thankfully, the Pink pigeon is still with us. But it could have been a very different story. In the 1970s there was as few as 20 Pink pigeons left in Mauritius. They were devastatingly close to becoming extinct. The reason they came so close to extinction was because lots of animals were brought to Mauritius, like macaques, mongoose, cats, rats-all these mammals eat the eggs of pigeons. Another problem was that a lot of the forest has disappeared, as I said earlier, so there weren't many trees left that the pigeons like to build nests in.  

 

What happened next was crucial for their survival. In the 1980s some birds were taken from the wild and kept in aviaries in Mauritius, not far from the National Park where they were found. It is sometimes easier to control things when birds are kept in captivity, like making sure they have somewhere nice to build a nest, have twigs to build nests with, and most importantly when they do lay eggs, it is easier to stop rats and cats eating the eggs as they are protected by an aviary.

 

This worked really well, and soon after there were enough birds to release back into the forest in Mauritius.

 

 

At the same time this was happening in Mauritius, some birds were sent to us here at Durrell so that we could start breeding them to make sure that if anything did ever happen to the wild population again, there were birds within zoos that could be returned to the wild. I didn't work at Durrell then, in fact I wasn't even born when the project started! But even now, more than 30 years later, Durrell are still helping Pink pigeons thrive in Mauritius.

 

Keep reading my blogs to find out how.

 

Until next time.....