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Chapin’s Crombec

Sylvietta chapini

About

Chapin’s Crombec is only known from three specimens collected in the 1940s on the Lendu Plateau, north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Chapin’s Crombec is the only avian taxon entirely confined to the Lendu Plateau (Prigogine 1985). This is a very rare species and has even been suggested to be possibly extinct. This species could occur in unexplored forest. This species is part of the Sylvietta genus, which diverged from their closest relatives 20.2 million years ago, during the Neogene period. Unfortunately, the Lendu Plateau has been reported to be under serious threat from encroachment from surrounding villages, including widespread and uncontrolled local logging. Only 20 hectares of the forest was seen to remain, and now all forest on the Lendu plateau could potentially be gone. No conservation actions are underway currently; therefore protection of any remaining habitats is required urgently, alongside surveys on known sites to determine the distribution and population size of this species.

  • Order: Passeriformes
  • Family: Macrosphenidae
  • Population: Possibly extinct
  • Trend: decreasing
  • Size: 5cm

EDGE Score

EDGE Score: 5.26 (?)
ED Score: 11.05 (?)
GE / IUCN Red List (?)
Not Evaluated Data Deficient Least Concern Near Threatened Vulnerable Endangered Critically Endangered Extinct in the Wild Extinct

Distribution

This species is restricted to the Lendu Plateau in The Democratic Republic of the Congo

Habitat and Ecology

This species is only known from montane vegetation on the Lendu Plateau.

Find out more

This wordcloud illustrates the threats facing this species. The size of each word indicates the extent of a species range that is affected by that threat (larger size means a greater area is affected). The colour of the word indicates how much that threat impacts the species (darker shades of red mean the threat is more severe).

Crops Logging

Threat wordcloud key:

Small area affected
a
a
a
a
a
a
a
Large area affected
Least severe
Most severe
Severity unknown
Source: The IUCN List of Threatened Species. Version 2017.1.
Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org