White-winged duck flits with extinction

By Tulus Sibuea

BOGOR (JP): When fires ravaging the country's forests are finally over, the grim work will be to count what is left of fauna and flora. For those which survive, the future is perilously uncertain -- their habitat has been destroyed and they will be acutely vulnerable to natural or manmade disasters.

The plight of orangutans driven from East Kalimantan forests has already garnered much media attention, but the white-winged duck (Cairina scutulata), whose Indonesian population is estimated to make up about a third of the entire global number of the bird, has become the most difficult animal to find in the forests.

The worst fears are that it may have disappeared from Indonesia.

Monitoring of hotspots by the National Space and Aviation Agency (LAPAN) shows many of the fires are raging in peatland, including peat swamp forest and freshwater peat swamp forest in Sumatra.

Unfortunately, these are the main habitats of the white-winged duck, locally known as serati, bebek or itik hutan, or mentok rimba.

The drop in the duck population is another alarming sign to conservationists of the nation's vanishing wetlands.

More than 400 hectares of peat swamp forest in Way Kambas National Park in Lampung, Sumatra, burned in the first few months of this year. Fires also affected Berbak National Park in Jambi.

These areas are among the most important sites as they support the largest duck populations. Recent research conducted by environmental organization Wetlands International found about 30 white-winged ducks lived in Way Kambas and 11 to 21 in Berbak.

A fisherman and locals from Telogolimo village near the Berbak National Park said they had seen more of the ducks in ricefields, a clear and disturbing indicator of how they have been forced out of their natural habitat.

The species, known to locals for their loud and piercing calls, depends on swamp forest habitats. It has a unique habitat of nesting in holes in large trees to avoid predators.

"When the rains came, the ducks flew to the ricefields with other birds, and some had fish in their beaks," Muhammadiah, a Berbak local, said.

The most recent population survey, held in 1995-1996, recorded 336 ducks, half of them found in Sumatra.

This was considered a probable underestimate as only a few areas were surveyed fully.

Urgent

Future research may identify even larger or new populations, but the total world population, including those in captivity, is still probably less than 2,500.

Baz Hughes, head of species management and conservation at The Wildfowl & Wetland Trust in Britain, acknowledged the probable loss of the white-winged ducks in Indonesia.

"Some 25 percent to 30 percent of the world population may be affected," Hughes said. "We urgently need to get people into the field to survey the damage."

The species is fully protected in Indonesia under a decree issued in 1972.

Although white-winged ducks are now thought to be extinct in Malaysia and Java, small populations survive in remaining areas of forest in India, Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.

The ducks ideally require the shelter of heavy primary rain forest, interspersed with slow running streams and sheltered pools.

For limited periods of dry weather, they may frequent larger open swamps within easy reach of patches of forest in which they roost during the day.

Fires affecting peat swamp forest cause a gradual conversion of dense evergreen forests into drier, open deciduous forests less suitable for the duck.

But the loss of large trees providing suitable nesting sites may be the greatest threat to long-term survival of the species.

In a stroke of bad timing, the fires started at the end of the dry season, when the duck is thought to nest.

Although survey results indicate the ducks are able to survive in degraded forest areas, this does not imply that they can continue to breed.

The presence of the ducks in such areas may be attributed to the logging of their natural habitat nearby, forcing them into new refuges unlikely to sustain a viable population.

At the same time, the ducks may be subjected to greater hunting pressure as the rural population increases.

Although they are wary birds, the ducks' fairly regular habits render them easy targets for hunting, and their relatively large size presumably makes them a worthwhile species to hunt.

Recent reports indicate the ducks may survive, but there is hardly any information on their distribution or population. Until more is known, conservationists can only speculate on how many of the 336 birds escaped the fires.

The writer is a researcher at the Indonesian Program of Wetlands International in Bogor