ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, November 15, 1996              TAG: 9611150072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
SOURCE: Associated Press

BRAND NEW BRAZILIAN BIRD SPECIES FOUND AND MAY SOON BE LOST

A tiny acrobat inhabits the forest canopy of Brazil's vast cocoa plantations, and its discovery has left bird lovers elated - and alarmed.

It's Acrobatornis fonsecai, a bird previously unknown to science. But the rapid destruction of what is thought to be its only habitat has ornithologists worried that its discovery soon may be followed by its extinction.

``If something isn't done, if the government doesn't buy the land and create a reserve, the acrobat will be extinct within 10 years,'' said Jose Fernando Pacheco, a researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and one of the discoverers.

The small black-and-gray bird first was sighted by scientists in November 1994. But a full scientific description wasn't published until the most recent issue of The Wilson Bulletin, the respected U.S. ornithological magazine.

Pacheco said the bird was dubbed ``the acrobat'' because it spends most of its time upside down, running back and forth along the undersides of branches.

The second part of the bird's name, ``fonsecai,'' comes from Paulo Sergio Fonseca, a bank worker and devoted birdwatcher who first spotted the bird.

When Fonseca saw it in 1994, he knew right away it wasn't a species known in Brazil. It took him two more trips, with two other researchers, to determine the bird was not only a new species but an entirely new genus.

Birds are classified by species, genus and family. For example, robins and bluebirds are different genera of the thrush family.

Pacheco speculates that the acrobat - the only example of the oven bird family in the region - survived by adapting to the changes brought by cocoa plantations, which require shade.

For more than 200 years, cocoa drove Bahia's economy. But more than 70 percent of the cocoa trees are dying from a fungus called witch's broom disease, which has no known cure. Farmers are selling or cutting down the trees to plant pasture.

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