Meet Kagu, an endangered bird Locus helps to preserve

Michal, Locus team

Who is Kagu?

The Kagu (or Cagou) is a highly unusual, almost flightless bird, which due to its startling ash-white plumage is known locally as the ‘ghost of the forest’. The only representative of an entire taxonomic family, the Kagu resembles something between a small heron and a rail. It has a large crest, long legs, a peculiar ‘bark’, which can be heard over a mile away. It is endemic to Grand Terre, the largest island of New Caledonia (Eastward from Australia) and has been adopted as the national emblem similarly to Kiwi, the national emblem of the New Zealand. Sadly, following predation by dogs and habitat loss the Kagu is now listed as Endangered. The Kagu experienced a decline in numbers during the 1900s primarily due to predation by invasive species. Domestic dogs have historically been the main threat to the species along with cats and pigs.

More about Kagu >>>

How can a hike/bike navigation app help to preserve it?

With its ability to create and navigate to points, record tracks and navigate along them.

This is Sophie (our user Philippe Brun’s niece) who works for the New Caledonia Ornithologic Society.  Her mission is to walk hours through the New Caledonian wild forest, in middle of nowhere, along a grid of waypoints predefined in Locus. On those waypoints she installs special automatic sound recorders (you can see a microphone on the side of the recording blue box) to record the Kagu bird songs. After a week she follows the tracks recorded in Locus and brings back the recorders for analysis. This method helps to evaluate Kagu population numbers, its behavior and much more.

We are very happy that our application can be useful not only for your leisure time activities but it can also help with preserving our nature’s treasures.

Photos by Roger Le Guen and Philippe Brun

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

More great articles

Home screen, it’s not just the maps

Although the map is the main thing you see when you turn on Locus Map and what you need to…

Read Story

Locus Map, not only for hikers and bikers

During the 13-year history of Locus, we have encountered many interesting and even bizarre ways of using the application. Thanks…

Read Story

Locus Map 4.17 is packed with new features – new search, new LoMap generation and coloring!

Quite soon after the previous version 4.16, which brought mainly corrections and minor improvements, we are releasing the next version.…

Read Story
Arrow-up