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  Greater Hornbill    

Greater Hornbill

The wild population of this species is listed as Lower Risk/ Near Threatened by the 2000 IUCN Red List and is protected from trade under Appendix I of CITES. This threat stems mainly from decreased habitat due to logging. Field research in Thailand continues for this species studying wild social behavior, diet and nesting requirements. This information will be used to improve captive husbandry as captive breeding rates for Great Hornbills have been extremely low. The captive population is aging and increased rates of successful breeding in captivity need to occur or the captive population will eventually be lost to old age. Knowledge of why exactly captive breeding rates have been so low is lacking. It is believed to be a problem with mate incompatibility so the SSP has begun a re-pairing project to re-mate some of the current adult individuals with new mates in hope that that will stimulate breeding behavior in these captive individuals.

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