A duck that was feared to be extinct has been found alive and well in the wild after zoologists spent 18 years looking for it in the wrong sort of habitat.

The Madagascar pochard was last seen alive in 1991. It had been given up for dead by most ornithologists. But a group of conservationists spotted one while hunting for a rare hawk in remote forests on the island.

Experts at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey who had been researching the duck since 1989 were contacted and sent their own team. They found twenty adult pochards and at least seven young.

Glyn Young, of the Durrell trust, has been searching for the duck, Aythya innotata, since 1989. He said: “The finding is extremely exciting. It was incredible. Some of the chicks could only just have hatched.”

Dr Young, who named his eldest daughter, Aythya, after the duck, added: “The Madagascar pochard is extremely secretive and little is known about its life cycle and behaviour. It was believed that they preferred marshy lakes with lots of reeds and emergent vegetation but the newly discovered population was found in a steep-sided volcanic lake with little shoreline marsh and reeds.”

Madagascar pochards eat vegetation growing beneath the water’s surface and dive to reach it. They were driven to the verge of extinction by habitat loss and the introduction of alien fish species that ate the plants.

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