THE Indonesian island of Bali is known to Australians as a holiday destination – especially at this time of year – but for birders it has been put on the map for an entirely different reason.
The holiday island is also the scene of an epic struggle to ensure the survival in the wild of one of the world’s most beautiful birds, the Bali myna.
The pure-white myna with a face mask of bare blue skin is Bali’s only native bird species but its status as the island’s wildlife symbol has not stopped its population being reduced to a less than 100 wild birds.
The Bali myna’s precarious situation is the result of land-clearance and poaching. The birds are not only prized as cage birds both in Indonesia and internationally but their carcasses are also used for medicinal purposes by some of Bali’s rural people.
At the last count, the species’ had fallen to critical levels – mainly confined to the West Bali National Park – but there are an estimated 1000 Bali mynas in captivity throughout the world and this captive population provides the only realistic hope for the myna’s survival.
The Bali myna (Leucopsar rothschildi), or Jalak Bali as it is known to locals, was discovered by the German ornithologist Erwin Stresemann in 1911 while was exploring the dry lowland forest on the north-west coast of Bali. He named it in honour of Baron Walter Rothschild, a famous English ornithologist whose wealth had financed many bird expeditions.
The Bali myna is a member of the starling family and, like most of these, occurs in small flocks that roost communally.
It once roamed most of the western third of Bali’s monsoon forest and acacia savanna, but today the wild surviving birds can only be found in the national park, on the semi-arid, far western edge of Bali’s Praper Agung Peninsula.
In impoverished Bali, the conservation of birds is given a low priority by the government and just a handful of park rangers are assigned with the task of protection the mynas from poachers, and indeed protecting the park from people trying to cut down its trees for firewood.
The rangers are armed with an old machine-gun to deter poachers. They have good reason to be on their guard. Armed bandits have attacked their post, stealing captive-bred mynas and causing serious injury to the rangers. Ten years ago, as black market prices soared, an armed gang stole almost all the 39 mynas awaiting release into the wild from holding cages.
Indonesia has a big trade in caged birds caught in the wild, as anyone who has visited the country’s markets will attest. The Bali myna is much sought after for its rarity and beauty.
The efforts to save the bird are centred on captive-breeding programs. The birds breed without problem and are easily transferred to the wild.
Bali bird lovers are determined the myna will not go the same way as another endemic wildlife symbol, the Bali tiger. The tiger became extinct in 1937.