Rare encounter:   Visitors take pictures of Bali starlings from outside their breeding cage at West Bali National Park. Since 2006, the government has been working with local breeders to boost the number of the critically endangered species, a native bird to Bali. (JP/Arya Dipa)

With various technical glitches obstructing efforts to raise Bali starlings in their natural habitat, the government is encouraging local breeders to play a major role in the preservation of the critically endangered bird.

A respected player in the bird-breeding business, Sukardi, the owner of Kere Ayam Bird Farm in Bogor, West Java, has succeeded in breeding the Bali starling, a species native to the resort island of Bali.

Sukardi said he had started breeding the species, also known as curik Bali or the Bali mynah, in 2004, after he bought a couple of mature Bali starlings for Rp 40 million (US$2,940) from a breeder in Bandung, West Java.

Sukardi initially had to breed the birds secretly due to the species'€™ protected status. His business later expanded after the Environment and Forestry Ministry sealed in 2006 an official cooperation with the Association of Bali Starling Conservationists (APCB) on the preservation of the species.

'€œAs of today, I have managed to sell around 850 Bali starlings, most of them sold in couples,'€ Sukardi said on the sidelines of the recent Bali Mynah International Workshop in Gianyar regency, Bali.

Breeder Samsul Arifin of Bali also shared a similar success story.

Samsul, a member of the Manuk Jegek breeders group, said he had begun breeding Bali starlings in 2011. Samsul bought his first pair of mature birds from the APCB, which allowed him to name his cow as payment collateral.

Currently, Samsul has seven pairs of birds at his modest breeding facilities.

'€œWe now have dozens of Bali starling breeders joining Manuk Jegek,'€ said Samsul, who lives in a village near West Bali National Park (TNBB), the natural habitat of Bali starlings.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the Bali starling as a critically endangered species since 1994.

A series of government-initiated release programs has gradually increased the population of the birds living in TNBB to around 200 from only five in 2004.

Speaking during the same workshop, the Environment and Forestry Ministry'€™s director general for ecosystem and natural resource conservation, Tachrir Fathoni, said that ongoing efforts to release Bali starlings had failed to significantly increase numbers due to the high number of predators and the absence of sufficient food sources.

The weather in TNBB, according to Tachrir, was also currently too dry for young Bali starlings to grow properly.

In an effort to increase the population of Bali starlings, the ministry has teamed up with the APCB to involve local breeders in the preservation of the monogamous bird.

A breeder, for example, must have proper breeding facilities and agree to return 10 percent of the birds successfully hatched to the wild in order to secure a license from the ministry to breed Bali starlings.

Separately, APCB chairman Tony Sumampau said the population of Bali starlings currently stood at around 3,000, including those kept by local breeders.

'€œWhen Bali starling breeders are numerous, the price of the birds on the black market will drop. This will discourage poachers from catching the birds in the wild because they are not worth selling,'€ he said.

The increasing Bali starling population will also help the birds avoid inbreeding, which can lead to infertility and birth anomalies, according to the Indonesian Institute of Sciences'€™ (LIPI) genetic and molecular researcher M. Syamsul Arifin Zein.

'€œIn a study involving 338 quails, the inbreeding system within the population caused the species to become extinct after its fourth generation,'€ Syamsul said.

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