Data Zone
Justification of Red List category
This species was found on the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, but was driven to extinction by the depredations of introduced species. It has not been seen since 1840.
Population justification
None remain.
Hypotaenidia dieffenbachii was endemic to Chatham, Mangere and Pitt Islands, New Zealand (Marchant and Higgins 1993). It is known from the type specimen in the Natural History Museum at Tring, U. K. (Knox and Walters 1994), and from abundant subfossil material (Tennyson and Millener 1994). The species was already scarce when the type was collected in 1840 (Marchant and Higgins 1993) and is likely to have become extinct around this time (Hume 2017).
Nothing is known, though it may have inhabited scrub or forest.
Its extinction was presumably due to predation by introduced rats, cats and dogs, and habitat loss from fire (Marchant and Higgins 1993).
Text account compilers
Vine, J.
Contributors
Brooks, T., Khwaja, N., Mahood, S. & Martin, R.
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Species factsheet: Dieffenbach's Rail Hypotaenidia dieffenbachii. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/dieffenbachs-rail-hypotaenidia-dieffenbachii on 22/12/2024.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2024) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/search on 22/12/2024.