Hawaii Forest Bird Recovery
Project Reminds People, “Birds Not Rats”
Posted: Tuesday, June 7,
2016 2:00 am | Updated: 9:51 pm, Tue Jun 7, 2016.
The Garden Island
HANAPEPE — With fewer than 500 ʻakikiki,
an endemic Hawaiian honey creeper, (Oreomystis
bairdi) left in the wild, a loss of even a couple of eggs to predators like
rats is considered a setback to the people trying to save this native species
from extinction on Kauai.
During a routine nest check at
Halepaakai on Monday, a team from the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project
discovered an empty nest, where previously there had been two ʻakikiki
eggs. The team had planned to harvest the eggs today as part of their efforts
to create a captive breeding population.
“With the population of ʻakikiki
declining so dramatically, it’s
heartbreaking to see a nest impacted like this,” said Dr.
Lisa “Cali”Crampton,
KFBRP director. “We think rats are the likely predators because they leave eggs
fragments behind. An avian predator, like an owl, would have probably taken the
whole egg. This nest was outside a rat trapping grid at Halepaakai, in an area
just northwest of Mt. Waialeale.”
The grid area has 150
traps.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service recently up-listed the ʻakikiki’s recovery priority to the highest level.
Very few species have this designation.
The KFBRP, which is
administratively attached to the DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife works
with multiple partners, including the USFWS, the University of Hawaii and San
Diego Zoo Global on conservation efforts for the ʻakikiki
and other threatened and endangered forest birds on Kauai.
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