Critically Endangered
Ultramarine Lorikeet
Vini ultramarina
The ultramarine lorikeet is a parrot in the family Psittaculidae, endemic to the Marquesas Islands.
The parrot
Ultramarine Lorikeet is a parrot in the family Psittacidae (order Psittaciformes) — Vini ultramarina.
Range and habitat
The ultramarine lorikeet is a parrot in the family Psittaculidae, endemic to the Marquesas Islands. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest, subtropical or tropical moist montane forest and plantations. It is critically endangered, threatened mainly by introduction of the black rat and by deforestation.
During the 1970s, the bird was still prevalent on its natural range of Fatu Hiva, Ua Pou, Nuku Hiva, and Ua Huka in the Marquesas Islands. All islands have been devastated by extremely high levels of grazing and fire.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
The bird's diet also includes multiple fruits and insects.
In crisis
Even so, due to heavy deforestation and predation by the invasive black rat and cat, the ultramarine lorikeet became extinct on Fatu Hiva, Ua Pu, and Nuku Hiva by 2008. Nowadays, the rare bird only remains on Ua Huka. On Ua Huka, the population is estimated to be at about 1,000-2,499 individual birds.
The ultramarine lorikeet is greatly threatened by the predation from the black rat that has greatly decreased its population since its introduction to Nuku Hiva in 1915. Deforestation to make way for farms, logging, and tourism has also had large impact in the decline of its population.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Ultramarine Lorikeet 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 Ultramarine Lorikeet, Wikidata item Q1265368. 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.
