Posted: Tuesday, March 21, 2017
2:33 pm | Updated: 2:34 pm, Tue Mar 21, 2017.
LIHUE — Dozens of times, over the
course of nearly two decades, staff from one of two bird conservation centers
on Maui and Hawaii island boarded a Hawaiian Airlines plane with either a small
wooden box or a large, six compartment crate.
For each trip to Kauai they were
transporting captive raised puaiohi, 240 in all, to release them to the remote,
rugged Alakai Plateau below Mt. Waialeale.
Monday, the two-compartment box
carried onto the plane by an employee of the San Diego Zoo Global’s Maui Bird
Conservation Center, got a lot of attention from passengers.
Is it a dog? Is it a cat? No, the
worker explained, it is a puaiohi, one of a half dozen rare, endangered forest
birds found only in the montane forests of Kauai.
San Diego Zoo Global’s Maui Bird
Conservation Center officially ended its puaiohi captive breeding program a
year ago, with the release of 15 birds.
On Monday, Jennifer Holler,
research associate in recovery ecology, carried the final two puaiohi to Kauai
to be released because they were underweight and not quite ready for release a
year ago.
For Holler, it was a moment she
won’t forget anytime soon.
“This is very exciting for me,”
she said. “I started working with this species more than 10 years ago, and we
all hope this final step in the recovery program means the puaiohi will
continue to thrive in the wild.”
Dr. Lisa “Cali” Crampton, project
leader for the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project, said the puaiohi
captive-breeding program was continued for 18 years and initially had great
success.
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