Abbotti Cockatoos Still Exist
Tuesday, 28 October, 2008 | 17:46 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:There are four sub-species of the yellow head cockatoo or the Cacatua sulphurea. Out of the four, the biggest, Cacatua sulphurea abbotti, is the least known. Not much is known of this yellow-headed cockatoo, except that it was believed to be extinct.

Last Thursday, however, there were reports that the sub-species were still found in Masakambing Island, Masalembu Archipelago, in the Java Sea. “We were ecstatic to find them in a housing area in Masakambing Island,” said Dudi Nandika, a researcher from the Indonesian Cockatoo Conservation (KKI) group.

In their survey, Dudi and Dwi Agustina (also from KKI) found four pairs of the cockatoo and two young ones in the 500 hectare island. Even so, the Cacatua sulphurea abbotti is still considered as member of the cockatoo family whose habitat is the most threatened and which are categorized as the rarest kind of birds in the world.

Dudi and Dwi were unable to find the cockatoo in two nearby islands in the same archipelago. An unpublished study in the 1990s found 5 – 10 cockatoos of the same type in Masakambing. Given the number of this species did not grow, their extinction was easy to predict.

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