One of the world’s largest and rarest pheasants have been spotted in Malaysia, specifically in Taman Negara in Terengganu.

According to a report in The Star, The Crested Argus Pheasant – or the kuang gunung was last seen in the 1990s.

It is classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as being endangered in 2018.

The bird, which reportedly can only be found in the remote mountains of Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan, also holds the world record for having the longest known feathers.

Spotted by experts

The bird was spotted by a team of ornithological experts, who published their findings of the surveys conducted on the populations of the Crested Argus Pheasants in Malaysia between 2014 and 2016 in the journal Forktail in Britain.

Lead author of the study Liang Song Horng said the team had set up hundreds of camera traps for their surveys for the species in Taman Negara.

“Our findings demonstrate that the camera traps we have set up to monitor mammals can also help us to collect important data on ground birds, many which remain poorly known to scientists,” he said.

Perhilitan director-general Datuk Abdul Kadir Abu Hashim, who is also a co-author of the study, said the bird is facing a major threat of being poached in Malaysian forests and its focus is to conserve the species.