Interior's Strategy to Prevent the Extinction of Hawaiʻi's Forest Birds (2022)

An ʻamakihi eating a pilo berry in Haleakalā National Park. Credit: NPS / A. Boone.

On December 15, 2022, the Department of the Interior announced a multiagency strategy to prevent the imminent extinction of Hawaiian forest birds threatened by mosquito-borne avian malaria. It included more than $14 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other appropriations.

Why it is urgent

Hawaiian forest birds are an integral part of the islands' ecology and culture. They reflect the health of the forest and remain a cultural link between the Native Hawaiian community and the islands. Many evolved in isolation, free of threats such as avian malaria carried by invasive mosquitoes.

• Avian malaria kills endemic honeycreepers and other forest birds widely; for some species a single bite from an infected mosquito is fatal.
• Four honeycreepers — the ʻakikiki (Kauaʻi creeper), ʻakekeʻe, ʻākohekohe (crested honeycreeper) and kiwikiu (Maui parrotbill) — may go extinct within 10 years.
• Nine more bird species are at risk of extinction in the foreseeable future unless landscape-scale solutions can be put in place.

Shannon Estenoz, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, said rising temperatures from climate change have let mosquitoes reach high-elevation areas that were once sanctuaries for the birds. Bob Reed, deputy director of the USGS Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, said the best available science shows steep declines in several species, and that without effective tools for mosquito control and bird conservation several are likely to be lost soon.

A rare image of an ʻākohekohe (crested honeycreeper). Credit: National Park Service.

Who is involved

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations, the National Park Service and the Office of Policy Analysis are coordinating the strategy. Interior agencies and the State of Hawaiʻi have long worked with partners in the Birds, Not Mosquitoes working group; the strategy gives Interior's bureaus a unified approach and strengthens their work with the state, the Native Hawaiian community and others.

Stanton Enomoto of the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations spoke of the forest birds as sacred expressions of island evolution and embodiments of the gods of the wao akua, the realm of the upland forest. Natalie Gates, superintendent of Haleakalā National Park, said the time to act, and to control non-native mosquitoes, is now, and that partner and community support will be key. Haleakalā is to be the first site for new mosquito-control technology, followed in later years by Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.

What the funding supports

• An environmental assessment, led by the NPS with the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources, of a new way to reduce the mosquitoes that carry avian malaria using the naturally occurring bacterium Wolbachia, on Maui lands in Haleakalā National Park, neighbouring state land, and private conservation land managed by The Nature Conservancy.
• Field staff to extend the incompatible insect technique (IIT) to high-elevation areas of Kauaʻi.
• More work by Interior and the state on developing, packaging, registering, testing and deploying IIT.
• Captive care — contracting and planning more facilities in Hawaiʻi for forest birds.
• Translocation — planning to move some forest birds to higher, mosquito-free habitat on Hawaiʻi Island.
• USGS research to confirm that IIT works, and to find next-generation tools, possibly including biotechnology to target mosquitoes or make birds more resistant to malaria.
• Native Hawaiian biocultural knowledge in every planned action, with appropriate traditional cultural protocols and practices.

An ʻiʻiwi on ʻiliahi (Haleakalā sandalwood) in Hosmer Grove. Credit: NPS / David Yates.

If it succeeds, the plan could be a model for reversing the combined effects of invasive species and climate change across whole landscapes while keeping both biodiversity and biocultural connections. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $1.4 billion for ecosystem restoration over five years.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Department of the Interior Announces Multiagency Strategy for Preventing Imminent Extinction of Hawaiʻi Forest Birds" (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — Ecosystem Restoration). https://www.nps.gov/articles/bil-er-hawai-i-birds-birds-not-mosquitoes.htm
• Corrected: "Wobachia" (Wolbachia) and "Insect Incompatibility Technique" (the incompatible insect technique).
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.