Extinct in the Wild
Guam Kingfisher
Todiramphus cinnamominus
Guam Kingfisher is a bird in the family Alcedinidae (order Coraciiformes) — Todiramphus cinnamominus, recorded as Extinct in the Wild.
Appearance
This is a brilliantly colored, medium-sized kingfisher, 20–24 cm (7.9–9.4 in) in length. Adult male Guam kingfishers have cinnamon underparts while females and juveniles are white below. It is restricted to a captive breeding program following its extinction in the wild due primarily to predation by the introduced brown tree snake.
Range and habitat
As of September 2024, all nine of the Guam kingfishers that were transferred from the Brookfield Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, National Aviary, Sedgwick County Zoo, and Disney's Animal Kingdom, have been released on Cooper Island, in Palmyra Atoll.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Micronesian kingfishers defended permanent territories as breeding pairs and family groups.
In crisis
The Guam kingfisher population was extirpated from its native habitat after the introduction of brown tree snakes. It was last seen in the wild in 1986, and the birds are now U.S. Listed as endangered. The Guam kingfisher persists as a captive population of fewer than two hundred individuals (as of 2017) in US mainland and Guam breeding facilities.
There are plans to reintroduce the Guam birds to Palmyra Atoll, and potentially also back to their native range on Guam if protected areas can be established and the threat of the brown tree snakes is eliminated or better controlled. The introduced population has since begun breeding with the first eggs sighted in April 2025, the first laid in the wild in over 40 years.
Guam Kingfisher is Extinct in the Wild 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 Guam Kingfisher, Wikidata item Q204140. 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.
