Philippine Deforestation

Flame-Breasted Fruit Dove
Ptilinopus marcheii

© 1998 W. L. R.Oliver

The flame-breasted fruit dove (top) is the most beautiful of the pigeons and doves in the Philippines. The Mindoro imperial-pigeon (bottom left) is seriously endangered by habitat destruction and the Negros fruit-dove (right bottom) may be extinct.

Pigeons and doves are familiar to almost everyone as adaptable animals that thrive in our city parks. Although breeders have produced some fancy varieties of domestic pigeons, all are colored in shades of gray, white, and brown, with only hints of iridescent color. This image leaves most of us poorly prepared for the flame-breasted fruit dove of Luzon. One of 33 species of pigeons and doves in the Philippines (16 of which occur nowhere else in the world), this spectacular bird has a large patch of bright orange vermilion in the center of the chest, a cinnamon shade of red head, wings spotted with carmine, crimson feet.
     As the name implies, flame-breasted fruit doves (Ptilinopus marchei) feed on fruits and berries in the old-growth montane and mossy forest where they live. Seeds usually pass through their guts without damage, so these birds are crucial in propagating many of the forest's unique plant species. These doves live only in very small groups (probably just a pair), and lay a single egg each time they nest.
     Since flame-breasted fruit doves can survive only in their native old-growth forest habitat in the central and northern parts of Luzon, they have been hard-hit by deforestation. As one of the largest doves in the Philippines (reaching 16 inches from tip of the bill to tip of the tail) it have been the object of persistent over-hunting (both by shooting and by placing sticky lime on branches of trees where the doves roost). Fortunately, a large enough population in the mountains in the new Northern Sierra Madre Wilderness Park to be sustain itself in that area. Elsewhere, their populations continue to shrink steadily.
     Some other unique Philippine doves have not been so lucky. Three species of bleeding-heart pigeons from Negros, Mindoro, and Sulu—so named for the small patches of bright crimson feathers on their breasts—are among the most severely endangered doves in the world. Six additional species are endangered, and one species is feared to be extinct.

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