Endangered
Sakalava Rail
Zapornia olivieri
Sakalava Rail is a rail in the family Rallidae (order Gruiformes) — Zapornia olivieri, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Sakalava rail measures 19 cm with grey underparts, a yellow bill and red eyes. This rail species exhibits some evidence of sexual dimorphism of different body size and colors. Males are smaller, thinner, have rufous-brown upperparts and bright red shanks.
Range and habitat
This rail species has been historically recorded between the Mahavavy Sud River in the north and the Mangoky river in the south. During this study, Sakalava rails were located at five locations: Lake Kinkony, Ampandra, Amparihy, Sahapy and Mandrozo. In 2021, the IUCN Red List estimated that the population ranges between 250 and 999 mature individuals.
Conservation actions such as creating protected areas are underway to preserve these ecosystems and their rare bird species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Sakalava rail's peak breeding period lasts from September to November, but there is some evidence that this rail species could have a longer breeding period lasting year-round. Both sexes participate in parental care activities during the breeding season: from building the nest, incubating the eggs, and feeding the chicks.
No evidence of cooperative breeding by helpers has been observed for the Sakalava rail. More than half of Sakalava rail's diet is composed of spiders, while the remaining portion is made up of insects, crustaceans and molluscs found under floating vegetation.
In crisis
It is classified as Endangered and is threatened by habitat loss due to the destruction of wetlands in Madagascar. Sakalava rail is classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List due to the degradation of wetlands in Madagascar. Habitat loss is a major threat to this rail species when the shores of marshes where Sakalava rails nest are converted into rice fields.
Also, human disturbance degrades the habitat of Sakalava rails when local populations burn and collect Phragmites reeds.
Sakalava Rail is 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 Sakalava Rail, Wikidata item Q28106655. 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.
