Negros Fruit Dove

The sole sighting of the Negros fruit dove involved a pair of birds seen eating at a fruiting tree. No other information is known about its behavior.

The Negros fruit dove is believed to be endemic to the island of Negros in the central part of the Philippines. However, some hope exists that the bird may persist undetected on a nearby island. The only known birds were collected from a forest at the edge of a clearing on Mount Kanlaon at an elevation of about 1,100 m (3,600 ft). The forest was noted as being "halfway between the genuine lowland dipterocarp forest type... and the real mid-mountain forest type." It is suspected that the species preferred habitat at a lower altitude, and that the collected pair may have been driven to higher elevations by deforestation in the lowlands.

The species has not been recorded since the original pair of Negros fruit doves were shot in May 1953 at Mt Kanlaon. However, a local hunter in southern Negros claimed to have shot it in the nineties, which has given hope that the species may still exist, and as such the IUCN lists the Negros fruit dove as Critically Endangered, as any surviving population is likely to number fewer than 50 birds. If the species still exists, it is likely that habitat destruction for agriculture, timber, and charcoal-burning and hunting, a common problem for all other pigeons on Negros, are major threats. As numerous collectors had visited Negros prior to 1953 and did not record the species, it is likely that it was already very rare by the time of its discovery. It is suspected that the Negros fruit dove was originally a lowland species, but the destruction of forests in northern Negros forced the dove from its ideal habitat and led to its probable extinction. Today, no forest exists in northern Negros at an elevation lower than 750 m (2,460 ft), and several searches in the 1990s of Mount Kanlaon and the surrounding area failed to discover any sign of the species' continued existence. Ornithological fieldwork has discovered that the nearby island of Panay is home to some species previously thought to be endemic to Negros, including the Negros bleeding-heart. This discovery and the presence of unexplored lowland forests on Panay give hope that the Negros fruit dove may still exist in low numbers on a nearby island. Other than the depiction of the bird on a Philippine environmental education poster in the 1990s, no conservation measures have been enacted to protect any surviving population.