Hawaii is an ecological disaster area.
RIP:
To clarify:
My second "job" out of undergrad was a 6 month internship in Hawaii working with a team trying to save the Po'ouli from extinction. It was a endemic bird with a specialized diet of land snails in the west Maui Mountains, only discovered in 1973 but in 2000 there were only 3 known individuals left. Now there are 0 as the last known individual died from avian malaria in captivity in 2004. I loved living there, I learned so much, and had tons of fun, but the outcome scarred me and Hawaii makes me sad now.
is there a recording of the call?
That is sad :-(
How much of their extinction comes down to man-made(?) causes (habitat loss etc.)? Also wow only 3 seems like a crazy long-shot to save the species. Are there any success stories for birds with numbers that low?!
lol owned, DC
Let's walk that statehood thing back a little bit.
I have a Baking Steel that makes fantastic pizzas in the oven.
It was all do to exotic animals, mostly pigs, rats and mosquitos. The pigs destroyed the forest understory where the terrestrial snails lived, rats ate the nests, and mosquitos spread disease. Mosquitos/malaria, have driven dozens of Hawaiian birds to extinction or the edge of it in the last 150 since they were first introduced to the archipelago.
The New Zealand Black Robin was brought back from 5 known individuals to ~250 today, the California Condor had about 12 individuals left and now has 200, and the Whooping Crane had about 20 and now has ~500. So it can be done, but 3 gives 0 margin for error.
Meant to include this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_robin#Conservation_and_distribution
lol my son has only slept for 7 hrs once in his ~ 7 months of life, which means i haven't had an uninterrupted night of sleep in 7 months
we're still in the wake up every 3-4 hrs sitch; think he may have some sinus issues compounding general fussiness
he's so cute though
I rarely bother trying to make my own pizza anymore
It’s a not insignificant part of our monthly food budget
Should have known it was those feral pigs. Had a tour guide that went on and on about how terrible they were for a while. He was a trained geologist though, so was way more into talking about LAVA and ROCKS.
Reading about Black Robins now and I am blown away: https://www.australiangeographic.co...raordinary-survival-story-of-the-black-robin/
Great work bird people!