What do you know about White Throated Rails and Crested ibises? Explain in detail with their present status.

The white-throated rail is the only flightless bird known in the Indian Ocean area.
Features of White Throated Rails

• The white-throated rail is a chicken-sized bird.
• It is indigenous to Madagascar.
• In the absence of predators on the island the re-evolved species of the rail has lost its ability to fly.
• It exists once on the Aldabra Islands which have now disappeared under the sea.
• Their IUCN Status is Least Concern.

Features of Crested ibises

• The crested ibis was last seen in the wild in 1979 in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean peninsula.
• Its head is partially bare, showing red skin.
• It has a dense crest of white plumes on the�nape.
• The species was driven to the edge of extinction partially because pesticide use eliminated its food sources until captive breeding programmes were set up.
• Their IUCN Status is endangered.

White-throated rail has evolved again by a process known as Iterative evolution which means the repeated evolution of similar or parallel structures from the same ancestor but at different times. Crested ibis was reintroduced to the wild by South Korean authorities recently, four decades after it went extinct on the peninsula.

Topics: GS-III: Conservation Environmental Pollution Degradation