Rare pink pigeons bred at Jersey Zoo returned to the wild

Three pink pigeons bred at Jersey Zoo have been returned to their native island of Mauritius.

They're the descendants of birds brought to Jersey Zoo by Gerald Durrell in the late 1970s. It was around this time that the pink pigeon wasconsidered to be one of the rarest birds in the world, with just ten individuals thought to remain in the wild. The population declined rapidly due to deforestation and the introduction of invasive predators.

There are now 470 pink pigeons in the wild. The species has been downlisted from ‘Endangered’ to ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2018.