A large frugivorous pigeon that is likely an important seed disperser throughout the range. Occurs in forests, including both primary and secondary, logged forest, forest gardens, mangroves and savannah woodland (Kirwan et al. 2020). In most of the range it is a lowland species: mostly below 300 m in India (Rasmussen & Anderton 2005), breeding to 500 m in Sri Lanka (Phillips 1978). There are maximum elevation records up to around 1,000 m in Indonesia, (Eaton et al. 2016), 1,050 on Borneo (Mann 2008) and 1,125 m in the Philippines (Dickinson et al. 1991), though it predominately occurs in low- and mid-elevation forest in these areas as well (Kennedy et al. 2000, Mann 2008, Eaton et al. 2016). It occurs up to 1,300 m on Hainan (Lee et al. 2005).

Widespread, occurring from the Western Ghats, southern and eastern India (where it is mostly uncommon or rare), in Sri Lanka (common), east to southern China and patchily in Indochina (absent from much of Thailand and rare in Laos, still fairly common in Cambodia), now rare in Peninsular Malaysia, present on Sumatra, Java (where patchy and uncommon) and Borneo (common in Sabah, and Brunei), the Lesser Sundas (where common in some areas), Sulawesi (common at least in the north and the south-eastern islands) and the Philippines (most abundant in Mindoro and Palawan, scarce on many islands), east as far as Alor and Seram to the south, Talaud and the Philippines further north.

Conservation Actions in place
Listed as a Class II protected species under China's Wildlife Protection Law. There are populations of the species within many protected areas throughout the very large range. Preventing forest loss within these sites is an essential basic first step: if this is achieved then the rate of population reduction will reduce in line with the relative size of the unprotected extent of suitable forest habitat. In theory, this action is sufficient in itself to reduce the suspected rate of decline in future such that the species risk of extinction is reduced. Hunting is also prohibited in the protected areas within the range, again providing a theoretical buffer to extinction. Remote monitoring of forest loss has enabled the estimation of the current rate of forest loss over the past two decades.

Conservation Actions needed
As with so many species dependent on lowland forest in the region, the key conservation action is retaining the remaining area of intact lowland forest in south-east Asia. The population impact of hunting is unquantified, and there is poor evidence of the quantification of the rate of reduction due to forest cover loss. Both could be addressed by surveys at locations in different habitats across the range that derive simple encounter rates of this and all species present coupled with an assessment of hunting intensity. Regular repeats of distance-based survey at least sufficient to sample each subspecies can achieve this, but careful use of citizen science data may also be able to address some of the data gaps here. Sites assessed should also include degraded forest, and plantations and cleared sites. Continuing accurate monitoring of the change in forest area throughout the range using satellite imagery is also vital. Ideally values obtained would report the area occupied by intact forest, previously cleared regenerating forest, logged forest and plantation as separate comparable values, with a level of on-the-ground validation for accuracy.