Pheasants: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan ... - IUCN

The cheer pheasant lives in
small patches of successional
grassland, and is under severe
pressure from humans through
hunting and changing land-use
patterns.
© Lynx Edicions
patchy and irregular canopy. Associated problems, such
as damage to residual trunks and soil compaction, are
discussed by Whitmore (1984), while Marshall and Swaine
(1992) offer a more complete review of the effects of
selective logging on tropical forests in particular.
Survey work on the satyr tragopan in Singhalila National
Park in India indicated that birds were avoiding areas near
human habitation, presumably due to habitat disturbance
or degradation. These areas were heavily grazed by cattle,
trees were lopped for firewood, and bamboo was removed
for construction (Khaling et al. 1998).
Whilst habitat degradation is generally considered to
be the result of the removal of some part of the vegetation
in rather stable climax communities, it is important to
remember that lack of significant disturbance will render
successional habitats less suitable for species that
particularly thrive in such temporary or managed
situations. For example, the cheer pheasant occupies
localities in the western Himalayan foothills that are
dominated by grassland and scrub habitats prevented
from developing into pine and oak forests through a
combination of stock grazing, hay harvesting, and stubble
burning (Kaul 1989, Kalsi 1998). In the Margalla Hills
National Park in Pakistan, where cheer pheasants occurred
naturally until 1976 (Severinghaus et al. 1979), the
abandonment of a management regime designed to produce
grass has resulted in the invasion of formerly open slopes
by a dense thorn scrub forest. This has rendered the site
unsuitable for the re-introduction of the cheer pheasant,
although it now supports a dense population of whitecrested
kalij pheasant (Garson et al. 1992).
Hunting
Although, for many animal species, the effects of direct
exploitation are considered relatively minor, pheasants
are often subject to very high harvest rates. Almost all wild
Galliformes have been, or still are being, extensively hunted
for subsistence, sport, or trade (Aebischer 1997a). In
practice, however, it can be very difficult to distinguish the
effects of direct exploitation from those due to habitat
loss, which is considered the primary cause for declines in
several European bird species, despite the fact that they
are also widely hunted (Aebischer 1997b). The impact of
hunting is also hard to quantify because much of it is illegal
and, therefore, covert. Nevertheless, direct exploitation
appears to be having serious negative effects on populations
of several pheasant species.
All three of the pheasant species classified as
Endangered in this Action Plan appear greatly threatened
by the activities of local hunters. Trappers were responsible
for the recent rediscovery of the Edwards’s pheasant (Eve
1997) and the captive population of the Vietnamese
pheasant consists largely of confiscated birds (Dang Gia
Tung in litt.). Through an interview survey of villagers in
Kalimantan (Indonesia), O’Brien et al. (1998) found that
snaring of the endangered Bornean peacock-pheasant for
food was sufficiently widespread to be regarded as an
important threat to this species.
Recent surveys have established that the green peafowl
is now absent over much of its former range in Vietnam
(Brickle et al. 1998) and Laos (Evans and Timmins 1996).
In both places, the declines are too rapid and widespread to
be solely the result of the forest fragmentation that has been
so rampant in Indochina over the last 30 years and, thus,
over-hunting is considered to be the major cause. Direct
exploitation for its meat, feathers, and eggs is also thought
to be the main reason for its decline in Java (van Balen et
al. 1995). Its extirpation from Peninsular Malaysia was
caused ultimately by hunting and, in many regions, green
peafowl continue to avoid areas near human habitation
(McGowan et al. 1998b). The situation of the Congo
peafowl must also give cause for concern. Much of its
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