Fellow Story
Keitt's Island Conservation partnership saves local doves
A critically endangered French Polynesian ground-dove known locally as Tutururu has been given a new lease on life in its endemic home, the Tuamotu & Gambier Archipelagos.
Only 150 of the birds remain in the world but safe habitats now available to them have more than doubled thanks to an ambitious conservation effort to eradicate introduced rats from the Tuamotu group.
The director of Island Conservation, Brad Keitt says the project was implemented together with Birdlife International and its local partner SOP Manu after they found that almost all of the remaining ground doves live on a single rat-free atoll.
