EX
Huia Heteralocha acutirostris



Justification

Justification of Red List category
This species is known from New Zealand's North Island, but it was last recorded in 1907 and is now Extinct. Habitat loss, hunting and disease have all been implicated in its decline.

Population justification
No extant population remains.

Distribution and population

Heteralocha acutirostris was endemic to the southern portion of the North Island, New Zealand. It was intensively studied by Buller in the second half of the 19th century (Phillipps 1963), and is known from numerous specimens (Greenway 1967), but declined to extinction around the turn of the century with the last confirmed record being in 1907 (Myers 1923).

Ecology

It appears to have required large tracts of primary, native forest.

Threats

The cause of its extinction is unclear but it was probably primarily due to habitat loss, especially of dead trees on which they depended for extracting beetle larvae (Burton 1974), possibly along with hunting and disease (Myers 1923).

Acknowledgements

Text account compilers
Brooks, T., Khwaja, N., Mahood, S.


Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Species factsheet: Heteralocha acutirostris. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/huia-heteralocha-acutirostris on 19/03/2024.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2024) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org on 19/03/2024.