Conservation personnel pay tribute to the last ‘akikiki in the wild | Big Island Now

When a group of men hiked into a remote mountain valley on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i in April, they knew it might be the last time they saw an ‘akikiki in the wild.

“This was kind of a farewell trip. “Akikiki are at most, a handful of individuals, maybe even less,” said Justin Hite, a longtime field supervisor for the Kaua’i Forest Bird Recovery Project, now working on mosquito control planning. with the Hawaii Department of State. of the Division of Land and Natural Resources Forestry and Wildlife.

“What do you do at the end of a species? They get no comfort from us who come to visit. It was so much more about us wanting to be able to say goodbye and go through them one last time,” Hite added.

Once numbering in the thousands in the stunning valleys and ridges of native forests, their decline in recent years has been predictable and rapid.

Just when a broad collaboration of government agencies, nonprofits, and countless individuals seemed to be making strides to protect birds from predators like cats and rats, avian malaria disrupted the equation. Global warming has forced disease-carrying mosquitoes into the higher habitats of akikiki and other Hawaiian honeybees. One by one the deadly disease has taken them away.

“That’s the tragedy, isn’t it?” asks Dr. Lisa “Cali” Crampton of KFBRP. “We are looking at this climate catastrophe, so I apologize to (the Akikikis) for what we have done as humans. I want the ‘akikiki’ to know that we really appreciated getting to know them. You know, if it wasn’t for this crisis, I don’t think people would have gotten to know the ‘akikiki’ as well as we do and love them as well as we do.

Their difficulty has reached far. School children in India named an asteroid Akikiki.

During the last trip, the team observed a female bird, named Pakele. Hite said: “We met her in 2020 and she was outstanding from the start.” In Hawaiian, Pakele means to escape. Three seasons in a row she had successful nests, probably while infected with malaria. “She’s like, it doesn’t affect me. She is an extraordinary type of individual.”

For more than a decade, field crews made personal connections with the birds by naming them and instantly knowing who they were by their colorful leg bands.

“This is a lot harder to talk about than I thought it would be. Just recapturing the emotions we felt as we know these birds. In my case I spent ten breeding seasons at Alaka’i,” added Hite.

The spiritual connection, as Crampton describes it, is a layer of the disappearance of ‘akikiki. “This is now represented by a bird like Pakele that is still out in the wild. This is extremely important to my staff. I think it’s extremely important for the public and for cultural practitioners to see Pakele as a representative of the hope we have, because she just keeps going. We hope she finds a mate. Even though they can’t sustain a wild population, they can sustain our hope, and that’s critical at this point.”

Despite the existence of one, two or three birds remaining in the wild, the species is considered functionally extinct. The best and only chance for a sustainable future lies with the captive akikiki in avian sanctuaries operated by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Perhaps one day, after the threat of avian malaria is gone, the ‘akikiki can be released back into the high plateau, mountains and deep valleys of Kaua’i.

“We did the best we could, given our knowledge and the science available,” Crampton said. “I want you to understand that we are all together. The fate of all these species is the collective responsibility of people everywhere in this world. It is our actions that have led to the situation our planet is in. I would like everyone to protect the environment wherever they are.”