Critically Endangered
Manipur Bush Quail
Perdicula manipurensis
Manipur Bush Quail is a bird in the family Phasianidae (order Galliformes) — Perdicula manipurensis, recorded as Critically Endangered.
The bird
Published measurements include mass about 65.
It was first collected and described by Allan Octavian Hume on an ornithological expedition to Manipur in 1881.
Range and habitat
It inhabits damp grasslands, particularly tall, dense stands such as those of elephant grass, and is also recorded from bogs and swamps, in vegetation up to 3 m (occasionally up to 5 m) tall, from the foothills up to about 1,000 m. The nominate race P. M. Manipurensis occurs in Manipur and neighbouring Assam south of the Brahmaputra, while the race inglisi occurs from northern West Bengal to Assam north of the Brahmaputra. Given the lack of recent records and the scarcity of remaining suitable grassland habitat, any surviving population is thought to be very small and fragmented, most likely persisting in Assam.
An earlier unconfirmed observation had been made from Dibru-Saikhowa Wildlife Sanctuary in March 1998. Three Important Bird Areas have been identified for the species in India: the Dibru-Saikhowa Complex, Buxa Tiger Reserve and the Manas Reserve Forest, together covering about 1,400 km².
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
P. Manipurensis was uplisted from Endangered to Critically Endangered in the October 2024 IUCN Red List update (version 2024-2) under Criterion D, on the basis that any surviving population is estimated at 1–200 mature individuals. BBC News quoted the conservation director of the Wildlife Trust of India, Rahul Kaul, as saying, "This creature has almost literally returned from the dead." The species has been treated as globally threatened since 1988. It was listed as Vulnerable from 1988 to 2012, uplisted to Endangered in 2013, and uplisted again to Critically Endangered in October 2024 under Criterion D.
The 2024 assessment estimates the population at 1–200 mature individuals, with the trend unknown owing to the near-complete absence of confirmed records since 1932. Hunting was historically a major pressure and continues in Manipur and Nagaland, although it is largely absent from the Assam protected-area network where any remaining population is most likely to persist.
Manipur Bush Quail 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 Manipur Bush Quail, Wikidata item Q1315912. 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.
