Thursday, March 15th 2018, 6:37
am GMTThursday, March 15th 2018, 6:42 am GMT
By HNN Staff
The Kauai Forest Bird Recovery
Project is gearing up in the fight against avian malaria.
In an effort to preserve Kauai's
dwindling bird population, the bird recovery group is raising money to support
teams that plan to ride Kauai's forests of malaria-spreading mosquitoes.
The "Save Kauai's
Spectacular Birds from Avian Malaria" campaign, nicknamed "Save a
Bird, Swat a Skeeter" will send out bird researchers to monitor birds, as
well as find and eliminate local mosquito populations.
Avian malaria is a mosquito-born
disease that is infecting the health of rare Hawaiian Honeycreepers on Kauai.
Three endangered forest bird
species on Kauai are at risk of imminent extinction. There are now less
than 500 Akikiki and the Puaiohi and the ?Akeke‘e are also highly vulnerable,
with less than 1,000 of the birds left left. The ‘Akeke’e population
has dropped by more than 90 percent in the last 10 years.
The bird recovery project and its
partners plan to halt these trends by stamping out avian malaria, which is the
single biggest threat to these species.
“To combat avian malaria, we need
to know how many birds are infected and where the mosquito populations are
breeding," said Lisa Crampton, project coordinator for the Kauai
Forest Bird Recovery Project, in a news release.
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