Cockatoo Rediscovered

Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 24th, 2008

A species of cockatoo feared to have become extinct has been “rediscovered” with the sighting of a handful of breeding pairs on a remote Indonesian island, researchers told Discovery.com on October 23, 2008.

Ten Yellow-crested Abbott’s cockatoos were found on the Masalembu archipelago off Java island, the Indonesian Cockatoo Conservation group said.

“We were excited when we found them in residential areas on Masakambing island,” researcher Dudi Nandika said.

The group included four breeding pairs and two juveniles.

Despite the discovery the Yellow-crested Abbott’s cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea abbotti) remains the rarest species of the bird on earth, he reportedly told Discovery. (I think the Indonesian Cockatoo Conservation group meant to be quoted by the press as saying these birds are the “rarest subspecies” of this species on Earth.)

It hasn’t been seen since scientists observed a group of five in 1999, researcher Dwi Agustina said.

It was assumed that number was too low for the cockatoos to reproduce and the species had died out, Agustina said.

The local population of the cockatoo has been threatened by hunting and capture for the pet trade.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.


2 Responses to “Cockatoo Rediscovered”

  1. Lightning Orb responds:

    At least with so few they’ll hopefully be easy to keep under surveillance

  2. youcantryreachingme responds:

    Excellent news. Maybe there is hope for other cockatoo and other parrot subspecies in Australia. Cockatoos can live a very long time so if those ten are well preserved they stand a good chance of building up numbers again. The bottleneck will be a nightmare for their genetics, but with good captive husbandry they should be able to get this bird back into the wild in considerable numbers.

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