La redécouverte du Fuligule de Madagascar

The 20th of November 2006, biologists for The Peregrine Fund have announced the sight of 13 Madagascar Pochards (Aythya innotata), a medium-sized diving duck that was considered extinct by many authorities until this current sighting. National Director for The Peregrine Fund’s Madagascar Project, Lily-Arison Rene de Roland, and field biologist, Thé Seing Sam, discovered the rare bird while conducting avian surveys in a remote part of northern Madagascar. They observed nine adults and four young that appeared to be nearly two weeks of age. Since their initial sighting, Rene de Roland and Sam have returned to the site to collect additional data and observations.
The last confirmed sighting of the species was more than a decade and a half ago at Lake Alaotra on the Central Plateau of Madagascar in 1991. The single male was captured and kept in Antananarivo Zoological and Botanical Gardens until its death one year later. Decline of the Madagascar Pochard is likely to have begun in the 1940s and 1950s in connection with degrading lake and marshland habitat from introduced plant and fish species, conversion to rice paddies, and burning. The last certain record of multiple birds (approximately 20) on Lake Alaotra is from June 1960. Little is known about the Madagascar Pochard, an extremely secretive and often solitary bird that prefers shallow and marshy habitat. Found only on Madagascar, most of the species’ behavior and life cycle is still unknown.