Kagu

Rhynochetos jubatus

Overview
Conservation Attention
Threats

About

The Kagu is a highly unusual, almost flightless bird, which due to its startling ash-white plumage is known locally as the ‘ghost of the forest’.

The only representative of an entire taxonomic family, the Kagu resembles something between a small heron and a rail. It only shares its taxonomic order with one other species, which is also the only representative of its family, the sunbittern. The Kagu has a large crest, long legs, and a peculiar ‘bark’, which can be heard over a mile away. They are highly territorial, engaging in sometimes fierce confrontations accompanied by shrill screams. This species is endemic to Grand Terre, the largest island of New Caledonia and has been adopted as the national emblem. The Kagu experienced a decline in numbers during the 1900s primarily due to predation by invasive species. Following predation by dogs and cats, egg loss from pigs and rats, and habitat loss the Kagu is now listed as Endangered.

Order: Eurypygiformes
Family: Rhynochetidae
Population: < 2000
Trend: decreasing
Size: 55 cm
Weight: 700-1100g

EDGE Score

EDGE Score: 6.11 (?)

ED Score: 55.38 (?)

GE / IUCN Red List (?)

Distribution

This species is endemic to the French overseas territory of New Caledonia, where it is found on Grand Terre, the largest of the islands and the only mountainous one.

Habitat and Ecology

This species is a practically flightless, ground-dwelling bird. They feed mostly on worms, snails, millipedes, insects and small lizards, which they finds picking through the leaf litter. The Kagu occurs in a range of forest habitats, typically those that are dense and humid, although drier forests at low altitude are occupied within the centre of the island. During the wet season this species occasionally extends its range into closed-canopy scrub.

Find out more

© Roger Le Guen
rogerleguen@panacoco.com
www.panacoco.com
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Wojciech Dabrowka / Kevin Vang
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Conservation Actions

For each key category of conservation action, we calculated a conservation attention score based on expert information. In this graph, a higher score means the action is being carried out more intensively over more of the species range. The colour shows how important each action is considered to be for the conservation of this species.

Engaging stakeholders	22
Addressing threats	48
Status of knowledge	30
Management plan	30
Capacity building	37
Behaviour change	19
Awareness raising	11
Funding	11
Legislation	67
	0 20 40 60 80 100
	Score: 100 means the activity occurs at high level across more than 75% of the species range
	Priority: High Medium Low Very Low

Overall Conservation Attention

We combined all of the expert information on conservation actions to calculate an overall conservation attention score for this species. Please help us to reach our goal of establishing dedicated conservation attention at “High” levels for all EDGE species.

Very Low Low Medium High

34%

More information

Recent studies have grouped all possible conservation activities for any species into nine key categories (Washington et. al 2015). For each action, we asked experts for each species to assess the extent to which that action is being carried out and how much of the species’ range that action occurs in. For each action we used these two pieces of information to calculate the conservation attention score per action. A score of 100 means that the action is being carried out to a high level across at least 75% of the species range. We then combined the scores for all actions into an overall conservation attention score for the species. The experts also judged how important each category was to the conservation of that particular species.

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).