Edwards's Pheasant
Encyclopedia
Edwards's Pheasant, Lophura edwardsi, is a bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 of the pheasant family Phasianidae
Phasianidae
The Phasianidae is a family of birds which consists of the pheasants and partridges, including the junglefowl , Old World Quail, francolins, monals and peafowl. The family is a large one, and is occasionally broken up into two subfamilies, the Phasianinae, and the Perdicinae...

 and is endemic
Endemic (ecology)
Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...

 to the rainforest
Rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...

s of Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

. It is named after the French ornithologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards
Alphonse Milne-Edwards
Alphonse Milne-Edwards was a French mammalologist, ornithologist and carcinologist. He was English in origin, the son of Henri Milne-Edwards and grandson of Bryan Edwards, a Jamaican planter who settled at Bruges .Milne-Edwards obtained a medical degree in 1859 and became assistant to his father...

 and first described to science in 1896 The bird's length is 58 – and has red legs and facial skin. The male is mainly blue-black with a crest, and the female is a drab brown bird. The alarm call is a puk-puk-puk.

There are two varieties; the nominate form L. e. edwardsi has a white crest and upper tail, whereas the northern form L. e. hatinhensis is found with a variable number of white retrices. This difference in the two forms may be due to inbreeding of a restricted, fragmented population there, and has also been seen in captive, inbred L. e. edwardsi. The northern form is sometimes given a separate species status by some authors, Vietnamese Pheasant
Vietnamese Pheasant
The Vietnamese Pheasant, or Vietnam Fireback, is a species of gallopheasant. Discovered in 1964, it is endemic to central Vietnam. Its range concentrates around Ke Go Nature Reserve in Ha Tinh Province.-References:*...

, Lophura hatinhensis (Vo Quy
Vo Quy
Dr. Võ Quý is a Vietnamese zoologist and professor at the Vietnam National University, Hanoi. He specialises in studying birds and was a recipient of the 2003 Blue Planet Prize....

, 1975).

Both forms of Edwards's Pheasant are currently listed as endangered species
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

, having suffered from deforestation, hunting and the use of defoliant
Defoliant
A defoliant is any chemical sprayed or dusted on plants to cause its leaves to fall off. A classic example of a highly toxic defoliant is Agent Orange, which the United States armed forces used abundantly to defoliate regions of Vietnam during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1970.Defoliants differ...

s during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

. The population is currently believed to number between 1000 and 3000 birds in the wild, mostly of the nominate form, but it is doing well in capivity, where it is the subject of ex-situ conservation
Ex-situ conservation
Ex-situ conservation means literally, "off-site conservation". It is the process of protecting an endangered species of plant or animal outside of its natural habitat; for example, by removing part of the population from a threatened habitat and placing it in a new location, which may be a wild...

. There have been no confirmed sightings since 2000 and in 2010 the World Pheasant Association (WPA) received funding from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund is a global program that provides provides funding and technical assistance to nongovernmental organizations and other private sector partners to protect critical ecosystems. They focus on biodiversity hotspots, the Earth's biologically richest yet most...

 to survey forests in the central Vietnam provences of Quang Binh and Quang Tri
Quang Tri Province
Quảng Trị is a province on the North Central Coast of Vietnam, north of the former imperial capital of Huế.-Geography:Located in North Central Vietnam, Quang Tri Province is surrounded by Quang Binh Province on the north, Thua Thien-Hue Province on the south, Savannakhet Province of Laos on the...

.

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