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Maleos, colourful Indonesian birds that look a bit like quirky chickens, are endangered. But an initiative to protect the species has helped boost the number of nesting birds at some sites.

The maleo (Macrocephalon maleo) has a flashy black and white body with a peach-coloured breast, a strange helmet-like head crest and a reddish orange beak. It lays eggs five times the size of a chicken egg, and the .

The eggs are collected for food on Sulawesi and a small neighbouring island – the only places in the world where the bird occurs naturally. But this is driving this charismatic bird to extinction.

“Even though they have protected status, the poaching of their eggs has gone on and on,” says , director of the Alliance for Tompotika Conservation.

One village was particularly concerned with the loss of these birds, and approached Summers’s organisation to help conserve the maleo.

“The maleo is extremely iconic. It’s like the bald eagle for Sulawesi,” she says.

The organisation agreed to pay the villagers to guard the eggs, which the birds bury in sand, where they are incubated through either the warmth of the sun or through heat from nearby geothermal springs. The project worked so well that the maximum number of maleos Summers and her team saw nesting at a given time quadrupled over 15 years, despite other ongoing problems like habitat loss.

Word spread, and other villages at a different communal nesting site asked to be involved in the initiative. Their maleo numbers were very low, but they have also seen increases over the five years since they began to protect the birds. The villagers erected a maleo statue to celebrate their work, with help from the Alliance for Tompotika Conservation.

“This project shows it’s not just economics that motivate people, but also their pride and their love of their natural heritage,” says Summers.

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