A new study warns the Timor green pigeon is on the brink of extinction after decades of neglect, despite being listed as endangered since 2000.Researchers estimate just 100-500 birds remain, with Timor-Leste now the species’ last viable stronghold after it has all but disappeared from Indonesia.Scientists say hunting has been the biggest driver of the bird’s collapse, while the absence of a recovery program, regular monitoring and sustained funding have allowed its decline to continue.Conservationists argue the species can still be saved, but only through urgent action that combines stronger enforcement with community-led protection rooted in Timorese customary conservation.
On April 20, Jafet Potenzo Lopes was surveying the south coast of Manatuto municipality, in Timor-Leste, when he recorded something he had not seen in years: three Timor green pigeons, alive, in a location where the species had never been documented before.
Lopes is one of Timor-Leste’s few field ecologists. He was born and raised in the village of Com, inside Nino Konis Santana National Park — the last place on Earth where a viable population of this species, Treron psittaceus, still survives. He has spent more than a decade walking through forests, coastal habitats and mountains across the country, documenting what remains.
