Species Fact Profile: Vietnam Pheasant (Lophura edwardsi)

                                            Vietnam (Edwards') Pheasant

                                                Lophura edwardsi (Oustalet, 1986)

Range: Central Vietnam  

Habitat:  Forests with closed canopy and dense bamboo growth

Diet:   Unknown in wild - zoo birds fed on commercial grain diet, greens, fruits, and insects

Social Grouping: Solitary, Paired, Small Flocks

Reproduction: Breeding is seen mostly from March through May, males displaying for females by erecting their crests and whirring their wings.  Females lay 4-7 eggs in a scrape nest, sometimes lined with feathers or leaves (captives will use wooded nest boxes floored with sand).  Double-clutching has been achieved in captivity.  Cream or pink-buff eggs are incubated for 24-25 days.  Based on captive observations, some males help raise chicks, others may act aggressively towards them.   Sexually mature by 1 year of age, more often breed at 2 years old

Lifespan: 14 Years

      Conservation Status: IUCN Critically Endangered.  CITES Appendix I.  USFWS Endangered.

• Body length 58-65 centimeters, with the male having a tail length of 24-26 centimeters, female shorter.  Weigh 1050-1150 grams.
• Adult males are dark and glossy with a blue iridescent sheen tinged with green on the upper wings.  They also have a short white crest and a slightly longer tail than the females.  Females and juvenile males are a uniform chestnut brown (a little grayer in young birds) and lack the crest and long tail.  In both sexes there is a bare facial patch of red skin; the legs are also red.  Males start to take on their adult coloration at about 12 weeks of age
• Alarm call is described as puk!-puk!-puk!
• Two varieties sometimes described – the nominate, with a white crest and upper tail, and a northern form (previously considered a separate species, L. hatinhensis, now sometimes regarded as a subspecies of Edward’s pheasant), with a variable number of white rectrices.  These different forms may be the result of inbreeding.
• Named after Alphonse Milne-Edwards, zoologist and director of the Paris Museum of Natural History.  Now increasingly being referred to as the Vietnam pheasant
• Estimated 50-250 mature individuals in wild.  Was thought to be extinct already until sighted in 1996, last confirmed sighting in the wild in 2000.  Population decreasing
• It is possible that the species is already extinct in the wild.  If so, it would be the first species of pheasant driven to extinction in the wild in modern times
• Primarily threatened by habitat loss – habitat was almost completely destroyed by herbicide spraying during the Vietnam War.  Remaining patches of habitat are continually threatened by woodcutters, with only small patches of fragmented remaining.  Construction of Ho Chi Minh National Highway bisected the species range.  Deforestation is also causing local climate change, with remaining forests becoming drier.  Remaining habitat/sites of most recent observations have been incorporated into protected areas
• Remaining birds (if any) vulnerable to increased hunted pressure, indiscriminate trapping that mostly targets more common gamebird species
• First collection of the birds into aviculture begun by Jean DeLecour, who organized 7 collecting expeditions between 1922 and 1939, collecting 55-60 birds, which were exported, forming the basis for the current world zoo population.