Mauritius Blue Pigeon - Extinction

Extinction

The Mauritius Blue Pigeon coexisted with humans for 200 years. Its decline can be correlated with deforestation, which is also the main threat to extant blue pigeons. Little lowland forest was left on the island by 1859. Frugivorous birds often need a large area for foraging and move between forest types to feed on different types of food, which grow irregularly. Other blue pigeons perch on bare branches, making them vulnerable to hunters. Cossigny noted that the bird had already become rare by the 1730s and attributed the decline to deforestation and hunting by escaped slaves. Unlike the Pink Pigeon, which still survives on Mauritius today, the Mauritius Blue Pigeon was not seasonally poisonous (though it was reputed to be) or unpalatable, and it was hunted for food.

The last confirmed specimen was shot in the Savanne district in 1826, but the 1832 report by Desjardins suggests that some could still be found in remote forests in the centre of the island. Edward Newton (convinced that the Pigeon still survived) interviewed two inhabitants of Mauritius about the Mauritius Blue Pigeon in 1863, and these accounts suggest that the bird survived until at least 1837. The first interviewee claimed he had killed two specimens when Colonel James Simpson stayed on the island, which was 1826–37. The second was a woman who had last seen a bird around this time, and recalled hunts of it in approximately 1815, in a swampy area near Black River Gorges, south western Mauritius:

"When she was a girl and used to go into the forest with her father de Chazal, she has seen quantities of Pigeon Hollandais and Merles, both species were so tame they might be knocked down with sticks, & her father used to kill more that way than by shooting them, as she was a nervous child. Her father always warned her before he fired, but she would entreat him to knock the bird down with his stick & not to shoot it – she said the last Pigeon Hollandais she saw was about 27 years ago just after she married poor old Moon, it was brought out of the forest by a marron. She said it was larger than a tame pigeon & was all the colours of the rainbow, particularly about the head, red, green & blue."

It can be concluded that the Mauritius Blue Pigeon became extinct in the 1830s. Apart from habitat destruction and hunting, introduced predators, mainly crab-eating macaques, were probably also responsible.