Conservation

The IUCN Red List status of Black Inca is listed as Vulnerable (BirdLife International 2013), and at the national level, in Colombia it is considered Endangered (Renjifo et al. 2002), because its habitat is severely fragmented within its restricted geographic range. This hummingbird has lost about 90% of its habitat (Salaman and Lopez-Lanus 2002).

Although Black Inca is recorded in disturbed forests, it seems to be more common in large expanses of forest; as a result it can be seriously threatened by the drastic reduction in humid forest (especially of oak forest) in Colombia (Salaman and López-Lanus 2002). The main cases of forest fragmentation are deforestation for human settlements, with associated activities such as logging and the conversion of forest to agriculture, including coffee production and, to a lesser extent plantations, of banana and sugar cane, and cattle grazing (Stiles et al. 1999).