Dodo model

Zoological Museum Amsterdam
Threatened and extinct species

C.S. Roselaar
Information Officer, Bird Department

During the biannual meetings of the Platform of Managers of European Bird Collections frequent pleas have been made that every bird collection should publish a catalogue of the extinct and threatened birds in their possession (e.g., Adams et al. 2003). The reason for these is obvious: further collecting of specimens from threatened wild populations is unethical and may bring the species closer to extinction, and for birds no longer in existence it is even impossible to do any research other than on specimens in collections. Therefore, detailed knowledge of which bird can be found in what museum is of prime importance for further study of threatened and extinct bird species (see: What can be studied from remains of extinct and threatened species?).

On this site, a catalogue of the extinct and threatened bird species in the Zoological Museum of the University of Amsterdam (ZMA) is presented. All species mentioned in a book on these by BirdLife International (published in 2000) are listed as far as represented in the ZMA, also the ones considered as Near-Threatened (they may be the threatened species of tomorrow). For each species, the category of threat is given (based on BirdLife International 2000, with an update from a CD-ROM published 2004); for a summarised explanation of these categories, see Categories of Threat. This is followed by an info section on the reasons of decline or extinction of the species (based largely on BirdLife International 2000), by a list of the items present in the ZMA, and by remarks on this info or on the items. See the Index of Threatened Birds. All references cited are compiled under Literature, abbreviations under Abbreviations. Most of the species are accompanied by a photograph of one of the ZMA specimens, selected by CS Roselaar for scientific value, not for beauty. Some more background information on the catalogue can be found under Some remarks on this catalogue.

The threatened and extinct species section could only be published with financial help of NLBIF and technical support of ETI BioInformatics. My sincere thanks extend to Tinde van Andel (NLBIF), Huub Veldhuijzen van Zanten (photographs, ETI) and Ruud Altenburg (website and database, ETI). Furthermore, I greatly acknowledge the detailed checking of the ZMA data in a preliminary catalogue by Tineke Prins (collection manager ZMA) as well as the patience of my wife Irene Maas for allowing me to write the main body of this text when on a Christmas holiday.