Critically Endangered
Ridgway's Hawk
Buteo ridgwayi
Ridgway's hawk is a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae endemic to the island of Hispaniola (both Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean.
Appearance
The adult has brown-grey upperparts and greyish barred underparts, with a reddish-brown wash, rufous-tinged thighs, and a black-and-white barred tail. The male is more grey than the female, and the legs and the base of bill are yellow.
B. Ridgwayi is a medium-sized, compact hawk, measuring 36–41 cm long.
Range and habitat
Ridgway's hawk's original breeding range included all of the island of Hispaniola and some of the adjacent isles and keys, such as Gonâve Island, Île-à-Vache, Tortuga, Beata Island, and Alto Velo Island. Even so, it has since been extirpated from a large area of the Dominican Republic and almost all of Haiti, due to extensive deforestation and loss of habitat there. It was thought to be completely extirpated from all of Haiti. Even so, recent expeditions to the islands of Les Cayemites discovered a breeding population there.
Ridgway's hawk is a bird of prey in the family Accipitridae endemic to the island of Hispaniola (both Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean. Reintroductions in the Ecological Center of the Puntacana Resort and Club in La Altagracia Province have proven extremely successful. 25 individuals were also released in Aniana Vargas National Park in Sánchez Ramírez Province, with more releases planned.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
It nests in the crowns of tall trees, such as Roystonea borinquena, with nest-building in December through June, and egg-laying in January to June.
In crisis
It is classified as Critically Endangered because of habitat destruction and human persecution in the Dominican Republic. Even so, due to conservation efforts, the population is now increasing. This bird is described as critically endangered, due to clearance of its forest habitat and persecution by local farmers, who claim that the species preys upon their domestic fowl. Electrocution from power poles and nestling parasitism by Philornis pici flies are also reasons for population decline.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Ridgway's Hawk 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 Ridgway's Hawk, Wikidata item Q1273226. 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.
