From The Times
January 12, 2007
The 'extinct' animal ducks back again
Lewis Smith
A duck that was feared to be extinct has been found alive and well
in the wild after zoologists spent 18 years looking for it in the
wrong sort of habitat.
The Madagascar pochard was last seen alive in 1991. It had been
given up for dead by most ornithologists. But a group of
conservationists spotted one while hunting for a rare hawk in
remote forests on the island.
Experts at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey who
had been researching the duck since 1989 were contacted and sent
their own team. They found twenty adult pochards and at least seven
young.
Glyn Young, of the Durrell trust, has been searching for the duck,
Aythya innotata, since 1989. He said: The finding is extremely
exciting. It was incredible. Some of the chicks could only just
have hatched.
Dr Young, who named his eldest daughter, Aythya, after the duck,
added: The Madagascar pochard is extremely secretive and little is
known about its life cycle and behaviour. It was believed that they
preferred marshy lakes with lots of reeds and emergent vegetation
but the newly discovered population was found in a steep-sided
volcanic lake with little shoreline marsh and reeds.
Madagascar pochards eat vegetation growing beneath the waters
surface and dive to reach it. They were driven to the verge of
extinction by habitat loss and the introduction of alien fish
species that ate the plants.
