Rare Bird Gets Own "Luxury" Beach

National Geographic News 13 May 09;

March 13, 2009—An exclusive stretch of tropical beach in Indonesia has gone to the birds—literally.
The odd-looking maleo (above, right) has been given 36 acres (14 hectares) of "luxury" protected coast on the Binerean Cape in northern Sulawesi, the Wildlife Conservation Society announced this week.

Found only in Sulawesi, the chicken-size maleo—listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—lays its eggs to incubate in the sun-baked sands and then leaves. The chicks climb out of the soil ready to fly.

But that makes the nests vulnerable to poachers who illegally harvest the eggs.

Fewer than a hundred nesting sites remain, "so every one counts," Noviar Andayani, country director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement.

"Protecting this beach is just the first step in what will soon be a comprehensive conservation project for the benefit of the maleo," Andayani said.

To commemorate the birds' new refuge, conservationists and local people recently released four maleo chicks (above, left).

Now owned by the local nonprofit Pelestari Alam Liar dan Satwa, the beach was purchased for about U.S. $12,500 by the Lis Hudson Memorial Fund and Singapore-based Quavat Management.

—Christine Dell'Amore
Photograph courtesy Wildlife Conservation Society

Bird gets its own private beach
Straits Times 15 May 09;

JAKARTA - A SPECIES of birds that are able to fly immediately after hatching from eggs buried beneath the tropical sand have just been given their own private beach in eastern Indonesia, a conservation group said on Friday.

Maleos - chicken-sized birds with black helmet-like foreheads - number from 5,000 to 10,000 in the wild and can only be found on Sulawesi island. They rely on sun-baked sands or volcanically heated soil to incubate their eggs.

The US-based Wildlife Conservation Society said it has teamed up with a local environmental group to purchase and protect a 14-hectare stretch of beach in northern Sulawesi that contains about 40 nests.

The environmental groups paid US$12,500 for the beach-front property on remote Sulawesi, one of Indonesia's 17,000 islands, to help preserve the threatened species.

'The protected area is already helping raise awareness about this bird,' said John Tasirin, WCS program coordinator on the island, adding that is especially significant because humans are the greatest threat to the maleo's survival.

Villagers often dig up the eggs and harvest them for food, he said.

The maleo, which has a blackish back, a pink stomach, yellow facial skin, a red-orange beak, lays gigantic eggs that are then buried in the sand or soil. The chicks hatch and climb from the ground able to fly and fend for themselves.

'The population of maleos are decreasing quite steadily,' Martin Fowlie of the Britain-based BirdLife International said of their new white-sand beach. 'So any protection is going to be a good thing.' -- AP