Maleo

Macrocephalon maleo

Overview
Conservation Attention
Threats

About

This large, predominantly black and white bird is found on two islands within Indonesia.

In the last 60 years the population has declined by as much as 90%. The primary threat is the harvesting of eggs by the local communities which has led to a number of nesting sites being abandoned.

The Maleo is a communal nester, which is considered to be an evolutionary strategy against egg predation. It regularly nests on sandy beaches, riverbanks and lake shores. Female birds will lay 8–12 eggs over the course of a year. These are laid in a pit which will be warmed either though solar or geothermal heat. These eggs, which are five times larger than a hen’s egg, are left to incubate for 2–3 months with no parental supervision. When the eggs hatch the young will tunnel to the surface and be ready to fly, requiring no parental care whatsoever.

The population is estimated at somewhere between 8,000–14,000 mature individuals. The Maleo has been protected under Indonesian law since 1972 and half of the current nesting sites are within protected areas, though its population is still regarded as declining. A small number of these locations receive conservation attention such as guard patrols which have led to an increase in hatch rates. Community engagement projects have been delivered to educate local people about the impacts of egg harvesting and a number of former ‘egg diggers’ are now employed as guards.

Order: Galliformes
Family: Megapodiidae
Population: 12,000-21,000
Trend: decreasing
Size: 55-60cm

EDGE Score

EDGE Score: 5.59 (?)

ED Score: 32.45 (?)

GE / IUCN Red List (?)

Distribution

Endemic to Sulawesi and the Buton Islands in Indonesia

Habitat and Ecology

This species inhabits lowland and hill rainforest up to an altitude just over 1,000 m. When travelling to coastal nesting grounds the Maleo will travel though some man-modified habitats. They nest communally on beaches, river banks or lake shores. They feed mainly on fruits, seeds, ants, termites, beetles, molluscs and other small invertebrates.

Find out more

Eddy Swan
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© WCS/Iwan Hunowu
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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	11
Addressing threats	48
Status of knowledge	56
Management plan	33
Capacity building	37
Behaviour change	11
Awareness raising	30
Funding	11
Legislation	44
	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

47%

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).