The St Matthias Islands, politically a part of Papua New Guinea, are often grouped together with the Admiralty Islands (EBA 193) and the larger islands of New Britain and New Ireland (EBA 195) into the Bismarck archipelago, but are here treated as an EBA in their own right. The islands involved include the main island, Mussau, which has a central volcanic spine, and the smaller nearby islands of Eloaua and Emirau, which are uplifted reefs.

Mussau is nearly all logged or under concession (G. C. L. Dutson in litt. 1997). On the smaller islands only isolated patches of sparser primary forest remain, growing on limestone outcrops too infertile to cultivate (Lepofsky 1992).

All the restricted-range species are forest birds and occur on Mussau, with the two endemics being confined to just this island. Six of the restricted-range birds are small-island species which occur elsewhere in other Papuan island and Melanesian EBAs, but do not show clear affinities to any one of them, and thus the St Matthias Islands-which host a highly distinctive avifauna, albeit largely at subspecific level (K. D. Bishop in litt. 1993)-have been treated as an EBA in their own right.

The Mussau subspecies conjuncta of Varied Triller Lalage leucomela (a species which has many other races elsewhere in New Guinea and the Australian region) is known by only a single male specimen, and has been identified by Coates (1990) as probably being a distinct species.

There are few recent data on the status of the birds of the St Matthias Islands but, although the two endemics Monarcha menckei and Rhipidura matthiae (classified as Data Deficient) are fairly common in logged and regrowth forest (Eastwood 1996; G. C. L. Dutson in litt. 1997), any future large-scale logging could have a devastating effect (B. J. Coates in litt. 1993, 1994).

Mussau has been identified as an important area for terrestrial biodiversity in Papua New Guinea by Beehler (1993) and is clearly a high priority for further biological survey.

Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Endemic Bird Area factsheet: St Matthias Island. Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/eba/factsheet/194 on 23/11/2024.