Critically Endangered
Edwards's Pheasant
Lophura edwardsi
Edwards's pheasant is a bird of the pheasant family Phasianidae and is endemic to the seasonal tropical forests of central Vietnam.
Appearance
Males are all black, with a blue tint throughout their feathers. Females are generally chestnut-brown with no crest. The male is mainly blue-black with a crest, and the female is a drab brown bird.
Edwards pheasants have a body length of 58-65 cm, among them the tail length, that is about 24-26 cm for males, and 20-22 cm for females. Males are heavier, with a weight between 1115-1100 g, and females around 1050 g.
It is named after the French ornithologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards and first described to science in 1896.
Range and habitat
Edwards's pheasant is endemic to central Vietnam and has been found in four provinces (Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien Hue). The birds often hide in the low vegetation, and females dig their nests in the grounds of these forests. Edwards's pheasant is a bird of the pheasant family Phasianidae and is endemic to the seasonal tropical forests of central Vietnam.
Khe Nuoc Trong, Bac Huong Hoa, Phong Dien, and Ke Go are reserves where these birds could reside. The Phong Điền Nature Reserve was initially designated to protect the Edward's pheasant after the rediscovery of the species in the area in 1996.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
An Edwards's pheasant at Denver Zoo's diet consists of mealworms, chopped fruit, and greens, specially formulated game bird diet. Edward's pheasants usually breed between the months of March and May.
Males push their chests, vibrate their wings, and erect the feathers on their backs to find their mate. Females can begin to breed after two years, while their maximum fertility is usually around ages 4-5.
In crisis
This difference in the two forms may be due to inbreeding of a restricted, fragmented population there, and has also been seen in captive, inbred L. Edwardsi. In 2012 the nominate form of Edwards's pheasant have been uplisted to Critically Endangered by BirdLife International, having suffered from deforestation, hunting and the use of defoliants during the Vietnam War. The population is currently believed to number between 50 and 249 birds in the wild, mostly of the nominate form, but it is doing well in captivity, where it is the subject of ex situ conservation.
There have been no confirmed sightings of a living individual in the wild since 2000 and in 2010 the World Pheasant Association (WPA) received funding from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund to survey forests in the central Vietnam provinces of Quảng Bình and Quảng Trị. It is considered possibly extinct in the wild as a result.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Edwards's Pheasant is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Edwards's Pheasant, Wikidata item Q2854549. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
