Justification of Red List category
This species was endemic to the island of Réunion. The only account in life was in 1674, and it likely went extinct in the early 1700s.
Population justification
No extant population remains.
Trend justification
There has only been one record of the species in life, from 1672-73 (Dubois 1674). Nothing is known about the cause of its extinction, but it Dubois' (1674) account suggest it was hunted for consumption, and it was likely impacted by introduced predators, and went extinction sometime in the 1700s (Hume 2017).
Nycticorax duboisi was endemic to Réunion (to France), and is known only from an incomplete tibiotarsus collected by Bertrand Kervazo in the Grottes des Premiers Français in 1974. The specimens are deposited in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris (Cowles 1994).
It is likely to have inhabited freshwater wetlands.
It was said to be "good and fat" [to eat] (Dubois 1674), hunting is therefore likely to have caused its extinction, but it would have also been subject to introduced predators (Hume 2017).
Text account compilers
Brooks, T., Mahood, S., Khwaja, N., Richardson, L.
Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2025) Species factsheet: Reunion Night Heron Nycticorax duboisi. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/reunion-night-heron-nycticorax-duboisi on 31/01/2025.
Recommended citation for factsheets for more than one species: BirdLife International (2025) IUCN Red List for birds. Downloaded from
https://datazone.birdlife.org/species/search on 31/01/2025.