Critically Endangered
Magenta Petrel
Pterodroma magentae
The magenta petrel, or Chatham Island tāiko, is a small seabird in the gadfly petrel genus, Pterodroma.
Appearance
This medium-sized petrel has a brownish-grey head, neck, and upper breast, with white underparts. The undersides of the wings are brown. It has a black bill and pink legs.
Published measurements include mass about 465.
Range and habitat
The magenta petrel, or Chatham Island tāiko, is a small seabird in the gadfly petrel genus, Pterodroma. Found exclusively on Chatham Island, New Zealand, it is one of the rarest birds in the world, believed to be extinct for over 100 years before its rediscovery in the 1970s.
Formerly widespread on Chatham Island, the tāiko is now confined to the forested Tuku Valley on the south-west of the island. The land on that tāiko were first rediscovered was privately owned by Manuel and Evelyn Tuanui, who in 1983 donated 1283 hectares of land to the government to protect the species, becoming the Tuku Nature Reserve.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The species is classified as critically endangered due to an assumed population decline in excess of 80% in the last 60 years and the fact that it is restricted to one small location. In the 2005 breeding season, the 13 known breeding pairs successfully fledged 11 chicks. The current population is estimated at between 80 and 100 mature individuals.
The main threats to the species are introduced mammalian predators, principally cats and rats, other threats are present from feral pigs collapsing burrows. A conservation strategy is in place on the island to translocate chicks to an area where the main threats have been removed called the Sweetwater Secure Breeding Site.
Magenta Petrel 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 Magenta Petrel, Wikidata item Q1266122. 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.
