Tahiti Rail (Hypotaenidia pacifica)

Year Last Seen:

1930

Comments:

This species was known from the Society Islands, French Polynesia, but has been driven Extinct by cat and rat predation. It was abundant on Tahiti in 1844 but had disappeared by the end of the century, surviving on Mehetia where there were records until the the 1930s.

Habitat:

Nothing is known.

Causes:

It was flightless, and its extinction was presumably caused by introduced cats and rats (Bruner 1972, Hume 2017).

Distribution:

Hypotaenidia pacifica is known only from Georg Forster's painting from Tahiti, French Polynesia, in the British Museum London (Knox and Walters 1994), from James Cook's second voyage in 1773, although there were reports from Tahiti until 1844, and from the nearby Mehetia until the 1930s (Bruner 1972).

References:

IUCN Redbook Data