Two chicks of an endangered pheasant species born in Fuengirola (Malaga)

TWO chicks of an endangered pheasant species have been born at Bioparc Fuengirola conservation centre in Malaga. 

The newborns belong to the Edwards’s pheasant species, discovered in 1896 and native to Vietnam rainforests. 

Both hatchlings are in good health and descend from two young specimens from Czech Republic and Germany that arrived at the centre a year ago. 

Males are of a very bright metallic blue colour and with some green feathers in their wings. 

While females are less colourful, brown or greyish, with darker tails and without a crest. 

There are less than 450 specimens of Edwards’s pheasant in the world, all of them in conservation centres. 

The last Edwards’s pheasant seen outside one of these centres was spotted in a local market in Vietnam. 

These birds used to live in the rainforests of Vietnam, but the majority of these were destroyed during the war. 

“The destruction of their habitat in addition to the illegal trafficking and hunting of these animals are the reasons they can no longer be seen in the wild,” a Bioparc spokesperson said. 

He added: “If it was not for places such as Bioparc, Edwards’s pheasants would be extinct.”