BORNEO: A bird last seen almost 180 years ago in the rainforests of Borneo has been rediscovered, who was presumed by experts to be extinct.
The Black-browed Babbler has only ever been documented once — when it was first described by scientists around 1848. However, last year, two men in Indonesian Borneo saw a bird they didn’t recognise and snapped photos of it before releasing the palm-sized creature back into the forest.
Ornithologists were astounded to find that the Black-browed Babbler was alive and well. “It was a bit like a ‘Eureka!’ moment,” said Panji Gusti Akbar, lead author of a paper on the discovery published today (Thursday) in the journal BirdingASIA.
“This bird is often called ‘the biggest enigma in Indonesian ornithology.’ It’s mind-blowing to think that it’s not extinct and it’s still living in these lowland forests,” he added.
According to the research, little is known about the creature with brown and grey feathers, which has been missing longer than any other Asian bird. Researchers hoped to go back to the area where it was recently spotted, but COVID-19 travel restrictions could slow the effort.
“There is now a critical window of opportunity for conservationists to secure these forests to protect the babbler and other species,” said Ding Li Yong, a co-author on the paper.
More than 150 species of birds around the world are considered “lost” with no confirmed sightings in the past decade, conservationists say.
