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Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom announced the birth of Rana, a female babirusa piglet, drawing attention to a wild population in steep decline.
The babirusa or 'pig-deer' (genus Babyrousa) is endemic to just four Indonesian islands - Sulawesi, the Togian islands, the Sula islands and Buru - all lying within Wallacea.
The animals are currently listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List but are expected to be uplisted to Critically Endangered after a sharp population fall.
African swine fever, which reached the Indonesian islands about five years ago, together with rainforest loss and hunting for meat, is driving the collapse; a zoo-supported camera-trap study across 2023 and 2024 recorded only two babirusa sightings on Sulawesi.
India recorded its own first African swine fever outbreak in 2020 in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, making the disease directly relevant to Indian animal-husbandry policy.
| Species | Where found | IUCN Red List status |
|---|---|---|
| North Sulawesi babirusa (Babyrousa celebensis) | Northern and central Sulawesi and nearby islands | Vulnerable |
| Buru or Moluccan babirusa (Babyrousa babyrussa) | Buru and the Sula islands | Vulnerable |
| Togian babirusa (Babyrousa togeanensis) | Togian islands, in the Gulf of Tomini | Endangered |
Every babirusa island lies in Wallacea - the belt of Indonesian islands between the Wallace Line to the west and Lydekker's Line to the east, which separates the Asian faunal realm from the Australian one. Sulawesi, the largest of them, sits east of the Wallace Line, which is why its mammals are so unlike those of Borneo just across the strait. This biogeographic isolation is the reason the babirusa exists nowhere else on earth, and it is the single most examinable fact about the species. The Togian islands lie in the Gulf of Tomini within Sulawesi's arms; the Sula islands and Buru lie further east in the Maluku group.
The disease pushing the babirusa towards extinction is the same one India first confirmed in 2020, when the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal, tested samples positive from Assam and Arunachal Pradesh - India's first recorded outbreak. The first Assam case came from Jonai in Dhemaji district. ASF affects only pigs and wild boar, is not a human health risk, has no vaccine in general use and carries very high mortality, so control relies on culling, movement restrictions and biosecurity. It had spread through Asia after being detected in China in 2018.
Drawn by Alfred Russel Wallace, it marks the faunal boundary between the Asian and Australasian realms, running between Bali and Lombok and between Borneo and Sulawesi. The babirusa, the anoa and the babirusa's fellow Sulawesi endemics sit on the eastern side, which is why UPSC-style questions pair 'endemic to Sulawesi' with 'east of the Wallace Line'.
Zoo breeding is conservation outside the natural habitat - the same category as gene banks, botanical gardens and cryopreservation - and is recognised in the Convention on Biological Diversity alongside in-situ measures. The Chester Zoo birth matters because a captive population acts as a genetic reservoir if the wild population collapses, but it does not by itself protect the habitat.
The nine categories run Not Evaluated, Data Deficient, Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild and Extinct. Vulnerable, Endangered and Critically Endangered together are the 'threatened' categories - so a move from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered is a jump of two rungs within the threatened band.
GS Paper 3 > Conservation, biodiversity and environment; Prelims 'species in news' and IUCN status pairings
A species found naturally in one geographic area and nowhere else, which makes it especially vulnerable to a single localised threat.
The group of Indonesian islands, including Sulawesi and the Malukus, lying between the Wallace Line and Lydekker's Line, with a fauna mixing Asian and Australasian elements.
A highly contagious viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boar with near-total mortality in acute forms; it does not infect humans and has no widely used vaccine.
Conservation of a species outside its natural habitat - zoos, captive breeding programmes, seed and gene banks.
Moving a species to a higher threat category on the IUCN Red List after evidence of further decline.