Rare Honduran Emerald Hummingbird

Honduras

Saving a Dry Forest Jewel

Quick! What’s green, 9.5 centimeters and found only in Honduras?

The emerald hummingbird, Amazilia luciae. It’s one of the country’s rarest birds—Central America’s most endangered, in fact—and the only bird to call Honduras its exclusive home.

But fewer than a thousand of these flying jewels still exist today because their habitat is being cleared for cattle grazing and agriculture such as banana plantations.

 

Photo: Robert E Hyman

Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-13-worlds-rarest-birds?image=6#xtCD9mt1vj6okfFW.99

The Honduran Emerald hummingbird is a flitting jewel in the dry forest, darting between bromeliad flowers, acacias and cacti while snapping up small insects midair. It is the only bird exclusive to Honduras and critically endangered, with fewer than 1,000 left due to habitat destruction.   The good news is, this pint-sized whirlybird now has a safe haven in the Emerald Hummingbird Reserve, created by the Honduran government in 2005 with help from The Nature Conservancy. This 12,000-acre reserve in the Yoro department protects not just the emerald but also critically threatened dry forest habitat—sorely under-represented in the country’s national protected areas system. Dry forests here are important sites for migratory birds, reptiles, orchids and up to 50 endemic plant species.

In the few remaining patches of suitable arid thorn-forest and scrub in Central Honduras, the emerald zips from blossom to blossom among euphorbias, acacias, bromeliads and cactus, sipping nectar and catcti.

The Conservancy is strengthening capacities of these local groups and supporting on-the-ground partners carrying out activities such as:

• promoting sustainable agriculture and cattle ranching to conserve the soil,
• reforesting degraded lands with native tree species,
• environmental education for both students and local farmers,
• creating trails and a visitor center and training ecotourism guides,
• beefing up patrols and training local park guards, and
• wildlife monitoring.

These activities are helping to ensure that dry forests—and the emerald hummingbird—remain a part of Honduras’ rich mosaic of landscapes for generations to come

 By Christiana Ferris

Source:  The Nature Conservancy,  www.nature.org/ourscience/sciencefeatures/index.htm