New Flightless Bird Species Found Off Philippines
Mon Aug 16, 8:02 PM ET
By Ed Stoddard

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered a new species of flightless bird on a remote island in the Philippines, the conservation group BirdLife International said on Tuesday.

The rare find is dramatic as flightless birds on small islands are especially vulnerable to extinction from human activities.

Many of the island species that have been categorized by science were long gone when biologists unearthed their bones.

BirdLife International said the proposed name for the bird is the Calayan rail with the scientific name Gallirallus calayanensis. The bird, about the size of a crow, was found on the island of Calayan in the northern Philippines about 40 miles off the coast.

"The Calayan rail is a relative of the internationally familiar moorhen, with bright red beak and legs contrasting sharply with its dark plumage," BirdLife said in a statement.

"But unlike its familiar relative, the Calayan rail is flightless, or nearly so, and found only on the small island after which it is named."

One or two new bird species are uncovered each year but this rail's flightless nature and unexplored location make it especially intriguing.

i grew up thinking that all birds were edible. that is until i read in a recent guiness edition, that a rare pacific bird (not the calayan rail) was discovered with poisonous feathers, skin and internal organs.

Well, I'm glad there is one animal that's safe from the retrosexual mac_bolan00. :)

This is very encouraging news!

I recently visited Bolinao and Bani, Pangasinan, and I was delighted to see so many herons and egrets making their nests in the mangrove forests there. This is a good sign that the mangroves there are relatively undisturbed (good LGU management of the mangrove sanctuary in the area).

We need all the support we can get from everyone in spreading the word that birds are good indicators of ecosystem health.

This means not buying anymore Pugon de Manila pandesal for me. In one visit, I saw Rhizophora and Sonneratia wood (two excellent mangrove species that are also unfortunately the best source of coal) near the oven stockpile. This is my personal crusade. No offense to the owners of Pugon (nung araw naman kasi madami pang bakawan kaya ok lang na pugon ang gamitin, e ngayon, paubos na ang bakawan forests natin sa Pinas), but I personally cannot patronize anything that uses mangrove wood.

what if the mangrove swamp were to be converted into a fish pond, or reclaimed to build a church, or a hospital, or an orphanage?

tejan, you may be saddened to hear that in Hawaii, mangroves are considered invasive species and are cut and burned. Apparently they grow so abundantly there that they need regular trimming. My friend who wrote me about this was utterly heartbroken and wanted to transplant the mangroves here.

Diba maraming mangroves sa Guimaras?

^ I was merely sharing with you my friend's dismay upon witnessing the trimming of the mangroves. I don't find it funny at all that she was devastated by the sight of burning wood. I also don't think that she, having been adequately trained in economics, would seriously suggest a policy of transplanting Hawaiian mangroves in the Philippines. I'm sure there are better, less costly ways to repopulate the country's dwindling mangrove forests.

Yap, sa Guimaras madami din. I have fond memories of Guimaras too.

Kakalungkot naman yun DeepQuant. I haven't really studied Hawaii's topography and geography, pero I wonder... why are mangroves invasive species there?

Thanks for the tip sa research!

Hindi yata nakuha yung joke ko: mangroves...mangoes (one of the crops Guimaras is known for)...sounds like...

Tejan, if you're interested in that line of research, it's in He'eia State Park where they clear mangroves. Mangroves are considered invasive because they are not indigenous to the area, they compete with native flora for resources, and their growth is exponential. The US sure is serious about cracking down on aliens! :)

I am sorry for the snooty post. I am slow with jokes in real life and twenty times slower in cyberspace. It doesn't help that Guimaras has both mangoes and mangroves.

Depende yan sa economic valuation, mac.

Pero personally, NO to conversion ako.

And to dear dear rabaddal, sensya na slow ako. Pero totoo, masarap ang mangoes sa guimaras, hehehe. Dami din mangroves dun.

re: mangroves

IMHO, I don't think that economics can sufficiently evaluate the ecological and economic losses of burning/ruining mangroves.

^^
what if your country or island is only a little bigger than singapore, is fully developed but for the swamp area to the sea and already bursting with both domestic residents and transients alike?

are you going to enforce population reduction? are you going to limit the stay of transients (tourists/investors)? are you going to increase bult-up ratio on fast land?

or, a little land reclamation 100 meters out to wipe out a swamp that does nothing but release tons of greenhouse methane; breed mosquitos, marauding crocodiles and pestilential birds.

ps: just for the record, i hate crocs. they're the animals that figure most often in my nightmares. snakes are sexy.

Scientific world celebrates stunning discovery of UPV wildlife biologist

Iloilo-born and bred wildlife biologist Carmela P. Española, a graduate of the University of the Philippines, is the current toast of the international scientific community after her discovery of a new rail species in the island of Calayan in the Babuyan islands was published in the August 2004 issue of Forktail, the journal of Asian ornithology.

The international press release for the amazing find was handled by Birdlife International and locally by the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines. The story was subsequently picked up by leading news services like Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France Presse. When British Broadcasting corp. featured the story at 10 a.m. on August 17 (Philippine time), it became a top attraction for its Science/Nature segment, generating more than 80,000 hits on the BBC website. It was a top story a few moments later on Google news. When it came out on Yahoo news, the story generated a vibrant creating vs. evolution debate on the Message Boards. As of August 19, 2004, the story was on 97 English-language websites covered by Google, plus 25 German-language sites, 16 Spanish-language sites and three French language sties. There was also widespread interest from magazines and newspapers. The story was front=page news for at least four national dailies in the Philippines alone on August 18, 2004. Radio and TV coverage of the story was likewise extensive in the UK, Canada and New Zealand.

Española’s remarkable discovery was the result of volunteer work she did for the Babuyan Islands expedition 2004 led by Filipino conservationist Carl Oliveros and British biologist Genevieve Broad. The nine-week expedition was the first scientific exploration of the Babuyan Islands since the visit of ornithologist RC McGregor a century ago.

Española chanced upon the rail, known to locals as “piding,” before noon on May 11, 2004, while she was doing an inventory of birds in the island of Calayan, the largest island of the Babuyan island group. Her extensive experience in bird watching, gained from her volunteer stint in conservation projects in Panay and as a co-founder of the Wild bird Club of the Philippines, enabled her to identify the rail as a possibly new bird species. She immediately took notes and photographs and recorded its loud, rasping call.

Her teammate, Desmond Allen, a British biologist and expert in Oriental birds, was initially incredulous upon hearing her account. He returned to the area where Española saw the rail and lured it out of the bushes using her recording of the bird call. Seeing the rail for himself, he confirmed Española’s suspicious that it is a new species.

Allen’s subsequent findings in UK further validated that the rail is indeed new to science and is endemic to Calayan island, meaning that it exists only on this island an nowhere else in the Philippines and in the world. Allen wrote the scientific paper describing the newly discovered species with co-authors Oliveros, Española, Broad and Juan Carlos Gonzales, a UP Los Baños Professor who helped describe the bird’s anatomy.

To highlight the conservation need in the Babuyan Islands they named the bird “Calayan Rail” (Galliralus calayanensis) after the island where on which it was found. The Calayan Rail is related to the Barrel rail or the “tikling,” a common sight in rice paddies.

Further information on this discovery can be accessed at www.birdlife.org/new/pr/2--4/08/calayan_rail.html and at www.birdwatch.ph.

Article by Christine E. Telesforo, reprinted from the UP Newsletter, 09/07/04