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Authorities won’t classify a rare bird ‘endangered’, but is it already too late?
Queensland government authorities are refusing to classify the most mysterious and rare bird in Australia as “critically endangered”, although its own experts conclude it may already be extinct.
A row over the fate of the buff-breasted buttonquail, a small ground bird found only in the woodlands of Queensland’s Cape York, erupted as doubts emerged over the authenticity of photos claimed to be the first-ever images of the buttonquail and its nest.
The bird is the only one of the estimated 900 species recorded from Australia for which there are no verified photos. State authorities believe numerous sightings of the buttonquail – especially a spate of recent reports by prominent north Queensland naturalists John Young and Lloyd Nielsen – rule out the need to classify it as critically endangered, a status that would generate funds and management plans to save the species.
However, University of Queensland scientists studying the bird told authorities many or all the sightings are questionable or baseless because of confusion by observers with a closely related but much more common species – the painted buttonquail.
An expert team from the university’s Recovery of Threatened Species group says the buff-breasted species has not been reliably seen for 100 years, when naturalist William McLennan found birds in the Coen area of Cape York in 1922. The team headed by PhD student Patrick Webster has not found a trace of the bird during four years of intensive surveys across Cape York.
Young was propelled to international fame in 2013 when he took the first photographs of a night parrot, regarded then as the country’s rarest bird. Nielsen is a well-known natural history author and a recipient of...