The cage-bird trade is one of the principal threats to songbird conservation in Asia. In Indonesia, where this threat is most acute, it has already driven several bird taxa to extinction in the wild and others to the brink of it. Among the most traded species, highly prized for its song, is the white-rumped shama Copsychus malabaricus, three million of which were estimated to be held in Javan households in 2018 (Marshall et al., 2020, Biological Conservation, 241, 108237). One taxon, C. malabaricus nigricauda, endemic to the Kangean Archipelago off north-east Java, is highly distinctive in size, plumage, behaviour and genomics, and may be a separate species, the Kangean shama (Wu et al., 2022, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 39, msac189).

With Cameron Rutt of the American Bird Conservancy, I spent 4 days on Pulau Kangean (the main Kangean island) during 5–8 June 2023 without encountering a single Kangean shama in the archipelago's largest area of forest, mirroring the results of an unsuccessful search in 2010 (B. van Balen, in litt.). The last observation of the species on Pulau Kangean was of a single bird heard during several months of surveys in 2007–2008 (Irham 2016, Zoo Indonesia, 25, 122–141). Satellite data and ground-truthing during our 2023 visit revealed that suitable habitat remains extensive on the island; capture for the songbird trade (easy with shamas, as they respond to playback of songs and fly straight into nets/traps) is the only plausible explanation for the bird's disappearance. Two Kangean trappers independently told me that the Kangean shama has not been observed or caught in the main archipelago for > 10 years; one said it was common until the early 2000s. Two households in Arjasa, Pulau Kangean, had pet shamas, but neither was a native nigricauda, or the rare (and also distinctive) form omissus from neighbouring Java; both were probably imported from Kalimantan. Among hobbyist Javan songbird keepers, the phrase Murai Kangean (Kangean shama) is apparently unfamiliar (J. Menner, in litt.), suggesting birds from Kangean have not been in trade for some time.

A few shamas that appeared identical to C. malabaricus nigricauda were found in trade in 2021, apparently collected on a very remote island (anonymity preserved) that year. These birds were purchased and are the founders of a captive breeding programme on Java (numbering 25 birds in June 2023; J. Menner, in litt.). Both Kangean trappers named the island in question unprompted, and one of them had personally visited it to trap shamas in 2018, 2019 and, ominously without success, 2022. The island is only small, has a jetty and settlements and given the speed at which insular shama populations elsewhere in Indonesia have been extirpated, is likely to become extinct in the wild without immediate conservation action. If a wild population of Kangean shamas does still persist, we may have only months to save it. A visit to the island is planned for as soon as is logistically and financially possible; if shamas do remain, in situ conservation should be implemented urgently.