New Caledonia — one of the semi-autonomous island nations in the Pacific Ocean that is inexplicably still technically a part of France — is home to a severely endangered bird called the cagou. Experts estimate that only around 2,000 of them are left on the island. However, recent efforts by New Caledonian conservationists have paid off, allowing the endangered birds to expand their populations, the Guardian reported.
The cagou (also sometimes spelled "kagu") is a unique bird — in fact, it is the only surviving member of an entire genus, Rhynochetos.
When threatened, the territorial cagou birds rise to their full height, open their distinctive gray-and-white-striped wings, and try to look as intimidating as possible.
Unfortunately, that strategy hasn't worked well on dogs, which seem to take this type of behavior as a challenge and keep killing off large swaths of the rare birds. In 2017, conservationists came across more than 30 dead cagou specimens that appeared to have been bitten by dogs. A similar incident occurred in 2020.
That led park officials to ban dogs, including those on a leash, from the sanctuary where the birds live, as well as taking more steps to monitor the existing cagou population. The results have been impressive.
"We now have forest areas with new pairs of cagous," Rivière Bleue park manager Jean-Marc Meriot told the Guardian. "The cagou population is doing very well, it is constantly expanding and things couldn't be better."
This story is a good reminder that humans can protect many of our most vulnerable and threatened species and that doing so often requires simple and common-sense measures. As dogs are not native to New Caledonia, conservationists don't need to worry about upsetting the balance of the ecosystem by removing the cagou's greatest predator from one area of the island.
Other recent conservation success stories include the revival of bighorn sheep populations in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and pygmy pigs being rediscovered in the Assam forests of India.
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