-: Alright, Aloha kākou,
welcome to our third Thursday webinar lecture series,
and also our State of the Monument lecture series.
We're so happy to have you.
We have people joining us from all over the United States
and also several countries around the world.
So we're really excited to have you.
Just quickly, technical issues before we start.
If you have any problems with your audio,
the best way to resolve that
is on the right-hand side of your screen.
There's a control panel,
and in it is a tab that says audio.
Just make sure your audio is set to
whatever your input and output are,
particularly your speakers,
whether it's speakers or headphones.
That's usually where people have problems with the audio.
you do have problems,
please type your issue into the question bar or the chat.
We monitor those throughout the webinar,
and we can try to help you resolve that during the talk.
So hopefully nobody has any issues,
but that's primarily where it comes up.
And also we will be typing in resources and other things
into the chat or the question bar on your control panel.
So keep an eye out for that for links and other things.
That's where we'll put that information.
So before we start,
the regular way we open up things in Hawai'i
is with either opening chant or oli
so, we're going to start with that.
We're going to start with a very special oli,
a mele, or song called Mele no Papahānaumokuākea,
that was written specifically for Papahānaumokuākea
and unfortunately this is a recording.
We don't have the live version for you today
because one of our people is on another meeting,
but I'm going to share this and we'll start.
(sings in Hawaiian language)
-: All right.
That's always the most wonderful and proper way to start.
So today we have a very wonderful presentation for you
by Dr. Sheldon Plentovich
who works with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Her talk is
"Ensuring the survival of endemic songbirds
"in Papahānaumokuākea."
Before we start, this webinar series is hosted by NOAA
and the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
The National Marine Sanctuaries
are a system of underwater parks across the United States.
In the Pacific, we have 15 sites in our system,
several on the East Coast,
a few in the Great Lakes,
also down on the Florida Keys and Flower Garden Banks.
Some of these are recently established
such as the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast site,
and also Mallows Bay, Potomac River are two new sites.
We also recently expanded the Flower Garden Banks site
and the Gulf of Mexico.
So our system is still growing
and there's a proposed site in Lake Ontario
that's going through
a sanctuary designation process right now.
On the West Coast, we have Olympic Coast,
Monterey Bay, Channel Islands.
Then we move out into the Pacific
where we have two National Marine Sanctuary sites
The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale
National Marine Sanctuary, and down in Samoa,
the American National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.
Also included in here are two sites
that are co-managed with other partners
like Fish and Wildlife Service, and that includes our site
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument,
co-managed by the State of Hawai'i
and the US Fish and Wildlife Service
or Department of Interior and Department of Commerce
and NOAA and Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
Also, we have another and Marine National Monument,
Rose Atoll, down in American Samoa.
So all these sites represent your
National Marine Sanctuary system,
and they act to preserve our special,
unique marine areas around the United States
The area that Justin and I work for,
and Sheldon also does a lot of work up here
is the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument.
We're the world's largest, fully protected area,
meaning no extractive uses within this boundary
it includes 582,578 square miles, it's enormous,
overlaying over the United States,
it extends from about New Orleans,
all the way to Las Vegas.
You could see that little inset map
on the lower left-hand corner.
So it's a pretty good chunk of the United States area.
Today our hosts are myself, Andy Collins,
I'm the Education Coordinator for Papahānaumokuākea
and work over in Hilo
at our Mokupāpapa Discovery Center
We also have Justin Umholtz,
who is the Education Specialist at Mokupāpapa,
and Malia, who hopefully will join us a little later
when she comes back from her other meeting,
who's our Native Education
and Native Hawaiian Outreach specialist.
We are your hosts for today,
and this is the place that we work at.
We work at a wonderful 20,000 square foot facility in Hilo
that interprets and brings the wonder
of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
to the people here in Hawai'i.
We have a gorgeous 3,500 gallon aquarium,
exhibits in English and Hawaiian,
and many other fascinating exhibits.
Unfortunately were closed due to COVID,
but we really do hope to hope to be open soon.
We've been doing a lot with online programming.
We just recently launched a series of lessons
that you can sign up for if you're an educator or teacher,
you can see that on our website.
Also we've been doing these webinars,
which have been a really great success.
Over 7,000 people have attended these webinars
that we've hosted so far.
But today we are here to listen to a wonderful presentation
from Dr. Sheldon Plentovich.
She leads the US Fish and Wildlife Service
Pacific Islands Coastal Program
where she works with partners to find innovative ways
to protect and restore ecosystems.
Her pet project involves
expanding Hawaiian yellow-faced bee populations
via translocation and habitat restoration,
protecting new Laysan albatross colonies
in the main Hawaiian Islands,
monitoring sea turtle nesting sites on Oahu
and killing invasive plants on Nihoa.
She hopes that a Palihoa translocation
will be a new pet project in the near future.
So Sheldon is a superhero
for many of Hawaiian native species.
At this time Sheldon, you can turn on your webcam.
I'm going to change the presenter to you,
and we should be ready to turn it over now.
Perfect.
-: Okay.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate this opportunity
to talk about one of my favorites things,
songbirds in Papahānaumokuākea.
Let me make sure I know how to forward this,
there we go.
So I'm going to start
by touching on biodiversity loss in the Hawaiian Islands,
and then go into an introduction to the history and status
of land birds in Papahānaumokuākea,
and then focus on what's been done
to monitor, maintain, and increase populations
of surviving species and what can be done in the future
to down list and potentially delist
these species off the Endangered Species List.
This is going to involve translocation to high islands
in the main Hawaiian Islands,
and it will be necessary for us to control,
introduced mosquitoes before we do that
because they spread avian malaria,
which these birds do not have any resistance to.
Okay. So in the Hawaiian Islands,
more than most places in the world,
we're facing a biodiversity crisis.
We've lost an estimated 90% of Hawai'i's dry land habitat,
61% of the mesic or wet habitat, 42% of wetlands,
60% of land snails and 68% of native bird species.
Sadly, most of the remaining bird species
are listed as threatened or endangered.
The picture here is ʻakikiki.
It's a Hawaiian honey creeper,
it's endemic to the island of Hawai'i.
It has an estimated population of 200 birds,
and the primary threat to this species is avian malaria.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon story
in the main Hawaiian Islands with our forest birds,
many of them.
We could lose up to four species
within the next five or 10 years due to avian malaria,
which is vectored by introduced mosquitoes.
Okay.
So the reasons for this biodiversity loss
in the Hawaiian Islands is varied,
but the things that are at the forefront
are introduced predators like cats, rats, and mongooses,
and then introduced diseases like avian malaria,
habitat loss, and alteration
due to development and other land uses,
and then more recently, at least in my lifetime,
climate change is a big driver.
So we're really lucky to have places like Papahānaumokuākea.
These places are protected
from some of those threats or most of those threats.
There are threats for invasive species,
but those are mitigated through bio-security protocols.
Although climate change is still a big issue
in the Monument, as you all know.
So within the Monument,
we have seven species of known land birds.
Each are endemic to their namesake islands
of Laysan and Nihoa.
Andy, can you see my cursor?
Andy: Move it again.
Yeah, I can see it.
-: Okay, great.
No?
Andy: I could see it, but it's small.
-: Okay, got it.
So starting from the left and go into the right,
we've got the Laysan millerbird, the Laysan rail,
the Laysan duck, Laysan finch,
and then there in the bottom middle, the Laysan 'apapane,
and then the Nihoa endemics,
which are the Nihoa millerbird, and the Nihoa finch.
In the late 1800s
there was a period of resource exploitation on Laysan,
and that included guano mining, egg and feather collection.
You can see that these carts are full
of thousands of Laysan albatross eggs.
This period culminated with the introduction of rabbits
by this dude named Max Schlemmer,
who brought his family up to Laysan.
He he was managing
the guano mining and egg and feather collection.
He thought he would bring rabbits
and start a meat canning business.
So, eventually the rabbits
ate virtually all the plants on the island.
Max and his family had to be
basically rescued from the island,
and sadly, there were a lot of species
that could not be rescued.
We lost an unknown number of native plants
an unknown number of native invertebrates,
and we lost three species of native birds.
So we lost the Laysan millerbird,
the Laysan rail there in the middle and the Laysan ʻapapane.
At Bishop museum, if you're interested,
you can still see specimens of the rail and the 'apapane,
and they're quite interesting.
Although we have lots of 'apapane
in the main Hawaiian Islands,
the ones on Laysan look quite different.
They had sort of this orange hue
and then the rail,
many of us are used to larger rail species
that are about a foot tall.
These rails were tiny, and just very interesting.
So, this is Laysan by 1923, but in 1909,
the area was designated as a bird sanctuary by Roosevelt,
and there were still rabbits on the island at that time,
so there was a lot of work to do.
The island was eventually protected,
the rabbits were removed, eventually became a refuge,
Monument, it's now a World Heritage site.
After these decades of restoration,
Laysan looks quite different now.
So after all of that,
we're left with four surviving land birds,
the Laysan duck, which is actually,
I guess you call it a wetland bird,
and that species has been translocated to Kure and Midway.
It's doing pretty well,
and it's not going to be the focus of this talk,
but it's a very cool animal,
and it probably deserves a talk all on its own.
But today we're going to focus on the Nihoa finch,
which is there on the top right,
the Nihoa millerbird bird and the Laysan finch.
These birds are very interesting.
I wanna tell you a little bit about each of the species.
The ulūlu, or the Nihoa millerbird is small
and likes to be surrounded by cover, so it's hard to see.
People go to Nihoa and they don't encounter it.
It's not a Hawaiian honeycreeper
like the Laysan finch and the Nihoa finch,
which are both Hawaiian honeycreepers
and are related to the honeycreepers in the main islands.
The millerbird is an old world warbler,
and it colonized the Hawaiian Islands
through Australasia or island hopping,
basically, through Oceania.
It's endemic to its namesake island, Nihoa,
which is one of the coolest islands in the world.
It's pretty small, it's only 63 hectares.
Its elevation is 275 meters.
Not only is it home to the Nihoa millerbird
and the Nihoa finch, it is home to all sorts of
super cool and fantastical invertebrates
that we've lost pretty much everywhere else
in the Hawaiian Islands.
There's a giant trapdoor spider and a giant earwig.
I could probably go on for hours just about
the invertebrates, but trust me, they're cool.
So all of these species are vulnerable.
All of these species are vulnerable
to invasive species introductions
and stochastic events like storms.
This is especially true as we see changes in storm patterns
and intensity that are associated with climate change.
As the water further north from the equator is warming,
storms are able to track further north,
and so this puts
the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in danger.
The millerbird, like I said,
is pretty secretive, but it's very inquisitive
and if you happen to right place at the right time,
you can be the subject of its curiosity,
which is what's happening here.
So I am videoing this bird,
which is about to jump on my camera right there,
and then stare deeply into my eyes,
looking for something to eat.
Thank God it didn't find anything.
So the second species is the palihoa.
It is the Nihoa finch. It's omnivorous.
It is a Hawaiian honeycreeper.
Unlike the millerbird,
this species is super curious and some would call nefarious.
This bird will follow us as we move around the Nihoa
and when we accidentally flush seabirds off their eggs,
it will quickly swoop down
and take advantage of anything it possibly can.
That's how all these birds have made it
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
They're on islands where there's few resources,
so they're really good at figuring out
what they can exploit for food and shelter.
The Laysan finch, or 'ekupu'u is no different.
This is a species that is very curious.
I have a whole reel from my last trip to Laysan
a couple of years ago of the species investigating my feet.
But it's not just feet.
You have to watch out for everything.
They are infamous for investigating tents and buckets
and getting themselves in big trouble.
So while we're on island,
we have to make sure that our behavior
is careful around this species.
Okay, and that goes to our first questions.
Questions one and two.
Malia: So we have our questions.
So if you are in full screen mode,
you wanna pop out using your control panel
and answering this question.
So the first question,
how many endemic land birds are known to have existed
within Papahānaumokuākea National Monument?
Go ahead and register your vote.
Is it three, five or seven?
Let's see, who's been paying attention.
All right, I'm going to close the poll out.
We've got lots of good responses, in about 5, 4, 3, 2,
and one I'm closing up the poll.
Let's see what the audience has come up with.
Okay, Sheldon.
So three, 6% of the audience said,
on five, 19% and seven endemic land birds at 75%.
-: Nice job, everybody!
Seven is the right answer, excellent work.
Malia: Okay, and so now we are gonna
go to poll number two.
So here is our question for you all,
how many endemic songbirds survive within
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument today?
So you've got three, two or five.
Go ahead and register your vote.
Hope you guys are very attentive.
I'll give you a couple more seconds.
We've got half of you that voted so far
and we are reaching almost 70% voting.
So I am going to close out the poll
and let's see what you all thought.
All right, so three, 75%.
What say you Sheldon?
-: Yes!
I'm liking this audience, it's amazing!
Good job everybody.
Okay, I'm gonna continue,
but it sounds like everyone's
probably knows everything I'm saying already here.
So now that I've given you an introduction to the birds
and I've hopefully convinced you
that they're awesome and that you should care about them,
if you didn't already.
Now, I want to talk about what's been done
to try and protect them.
The Monument manager's plan has a strategy
and activities associated with that strategy
to protect these species.
The strategy is to maintain
stable or increasing populations,
and the activities associated are to
continue to conduct annual censuses of the population
and monitor food and habitat requirements.
Also, to implement translocations of each species
and site restoration as needed,
mostly to develop appropriate capture,
translocation and release techniques.
So, we have made progress, and in doing those things here,
since the manager's plan has been enacted,
but there was progress before.
There's been translocation efforts
starting as early as 1891.
I wanted to just kind of go over what's been done.
So, recall we have three passerines as this audience knows.
Two of them are endemic to Nihoa.
One of them is endemic to Laysan.
Each of them are single island endemics
with high population variability,
and so they're vulnerable to species introductions.
This is the way it started in the 1800s,
and so we have used translocations since then,
since they saw that birds were declining on Laysan,
people have wanted to help.
So translocations were used in an effort
to decrease extinction risk
by increasing population size and expanding range.
So, we've had six different efforts to translocate birds
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The Laysan finch was translocated.
Efforts started in 1891 to translocate to Eastern island.
There was a subsequent translocation in 1910,
and then birds were moved,
Laysan finches were moved
to Sand Island on Midway in 1905.
These translocations worked, they were great.
Birds were doing fine until 1944 when rats were introduced.
The Laysan finch
was also translocated to Pearl and Hermes in 1967.
We'll talk more in more detail about these other ones.
Nihoa finch translocated to French Frigate Shoal,
and there was an effort
to move millerbirds to Mokumanamana,
and then our more recent effort
to move millerbirds to Laysan in 2011 and 12.
So here's just a few details on those translocations.
They were kind of hard to come by
because they're pretty old, and so Sheila Conant
helped me compile all of this information.
Laysan finches were moved to Midway Eastern Island
in 1891 and 1910, and then Sand Island in 1905.
They did well until they were extirpated in 1944,
due to the introduction of rats.
The Laysan finch was moved to Pearl and Hermes in 1967.
59 males and 51 females were translocated
to Southeast Island and then moved
to the remaining vegetated islands over the next six years.
In 1986 there was an estimated 18 plus birds
on Southeast, North, Grass, and Seal Kittery.
So, this was good news, but as you know,
Pearl and Hermes is composed
of very, very low-lying islets
and they are getting washed over.
So as of November, 2018,
we could only find approximately 200 birds
and they were only surviving on Southeast.
So this population is not gonna
survive long into the future.
Nihoa finch.
So the Nihoa finches were moved to French Frigate Shoals
in 1967, 42 birds were moved.
They went to Tern Island and to East Island,
and by 1974, unfortunately only six were left,
and then none survive long after that.
So this was a failed translocation.
Then the Nihoa millerbird.
We had a really hard time tracking this down,
but sometime around 1968 or 1969,
Kridler and Syncock, two pretty famous biologists
attempted to translocate the bird to Mokumanamana.
The birds didn't do well in captivity, as I mentioned,
they're insectivorous, so they're pretty hard to keep,
and so they just gave up and released them on Nihoa.
We tried again to translocate millerbirds,
this time to Laysan, to replace lost interactions
that were lost when the Laysan millerbird went extinct.
So we translocated those birds in 2011 and 2012,
we had a really high quality team of aviculturists,
and our vet was Thierry Work.
All the birds survived captivity,
most of them gained weight on the translocation.
We were making jokes
that they weren't gonna be able to fly
after they had their mealworm buffet
on the Searcher during their voyage to Laysan.
But, we moved a total of 50 birds over two years
and that population continues to increase.
We released those birds
just in the Northern section of Laysan,
where there's a dense patch of naupaka or scaevola.
Those birds had never even seen that species before,
it does not exist on Nihoa, but they loved it,
and they reproduced immediately,
and they've been expanding ever since.
There are over 100 birds.
We're having a hard time getting good estimates
because the error bars are large
because the population's still relatively low,
but they have expanded to island wide now.
Okay. So as of 2021, we still have three species,
which is good that we still have three species,
but now they're on more islands.
So the Nihoa millerbird is now in Laysan
and the Laysan finch is on Pearl and Hermes.
The Nihoa finch, sadly, is still on one island,
and so is very subject to...
Has a higher extinction risk because of that.
So in general, the species status has improved,
Nihoa millerbirds and Laysan finches,
are on two islands,
but it's important to remember that both of those islands
are susceptible to sea level rise
and Pearl and Hermes is already having washover events
and Laysan will have those events also
at some time in the future.
All right, and so with that,
let's move on to the last two questions.
Malia: Okay, friends, our first question.
The Laysan finch has populations on which islands?
Your choices, Laysan and Lisianski,
Laysan only, Laysan and Pearl and Hermes.
Go ahead and register your votes.
I just wanted to share
the Hawaiian names of these places.
So for Pearl and Hermes it's Manawai,
for Laysan it's Kamole,
and for Lisianski it is Kapou.
These are the traditional Hawaiian names for these places.
So go ahead, register your vote.
I see that almost 70% of you have voted
and I'm gonna close down the poll in a few seconds.
Let's see, I know you folks are very attentive
and have been paying great attention.
Okay. Closing the poll.
So let's see.
Sheldon, let's see if they've been paying attention.
So 70% say Laysan and Pearl and Hermes, is that correct?
-: Yes!
Again, they are correct.
Good job everybody.
Malia: Alrighty, and now we're gonna go on
to our last and final poll.
The question is how many translocations
of Papahānaumokuākea songbirds have been attempted
since the late 1800s?
So your choices are one, six, or three.
Go ahead and register your votes.
Oh yeah, you guys are on, it got almost 60% of you.
I'm gonna close out in a few seconds
and let's see what the results are.
Okay, Sheldon, here we go.
So 90% of our attendees have said
that it's been six translocations, is that true?
-: That is true, and obviously my questions were too easy,
but Andy told me I could make them easy,
but this crew obviously needs harder questions.
All right.
Moving forward.
Okay. So there has...
So, as I mentioned prior to the poll questions,
species status has improved,
and so we have millerbirds and finches on two islands
or Millerbirds and Laysan finches on two islands.
Each of those islands are vulnerable to ocean inundation.
Then we still have the Nihoa millerbird
that's just on a single island.
So we're doing pretty good
in terms of the Monument manager's plans.
We're protecting these birds.
Populations are stable or increasing.
We're doing an okay job,
but the next step beyond that is like,
how do we get them off the Endangered Species Act?
What steps need to be taken
for them to be downlisted to threatened
and then ultimately delisted.
So, the US Fish and Wildlife Service
Draft Recovery Criteria for these species are,
viable self-sustaining populations
of each species on two high islands,
so, islands that are resistant to ocean inundation,
stable or increasing population trend over 15 years
and threats are sufficiently managed or addressed,
and genetic diversity is maintained and represented
in translocated populations.
So the main take home message is,
that this is totally possible.
Like there are some obstacles to overcome,
but we can definitely do this.
So the rest of this talk is just a vision
on how to make that happen
and a table showing just one of many possible ways
to make it happen.
But what we'll need to do first is have regular,
preferably annual monitoring
just to identify the trends of these species
so that we can know what's happening
and make better decisions around translocating them.
We have pretty good data.
These data go up to 2013
they're from our last published paper.
We have a new paper that we're working on right now
that covers data up through 2020,
and we're seeing similar trends,
the millerbird on Nihoa here on the top,
you can see it's pretty variable.
Our last estimate for 2020 was around,
it was actually around a thousand birds.
So it's possible that in the last five years we had
kind of an increased trend in millerbird.
Finches had a positive trend since 1990.
It seems to have leveled off in the more recent data
that we're seeing now.
Then the Laysan finch.
This is from Underwood 2013.
There's a lot of variability,
but in general, this population is staying pretty steady.
So we need to keep tracking these populations,
figuring out what they're doing.
The second thing we need to do is identify high islands
where threats can be managed.
So think about what they're gonna, and then,
and think about what they're gonna be
and we can choose them carefully
by looking at the fossil record.
So telespiza, which is the genus of the Nihoa finch,
and the Laysan finch, that genus was widespread
in the lowlands of the main Hawaiian Islands.
There are five known species that include
the Laysan and Nihoa finches and the fossil record shows
that two or more species were known to occur
on each of the main Hawaiian Islands.
So we have options for translocation here where we could,
just be re-introducing them into their previous range.
So Laysan finch was found at Barbers Point on Oʻahu.
It was also found at ʻĪlio Point on Molokaʻi.
The Nihoa finch co-occurred
with the Laysan finch atʻĪlio Point,
and it's also present at Mo'omomi on Molokaʻi.
For the Nihoa millerbird, it's different,
there's no evidence that the genus occurred
in the Hawaiian archipelago outside of Nihoa
and now in Laysan.
So a translocation to one of the high islands
in the main Hawaiian Islands
would be classified as a conservation introduction
under the IUCN guidelines,
and it would be necessary to reduce extinction risk.
So there's a ton of possible paths
for downlisting these species, and here is just one.
So starting on the left side,
the Nihoa finch is present on the high island of Nihoa
and only there, so it could be
translocated to Lisiasnki or Kure,
those two were identified
in a structured decision making workshop.
Kure is a little problematic right now
because we know there's mosquitoes on Midway
and Kure and Midway are quite close
and we know that the finches
have basically no resistance to avian malaria.
So we wouldn't really wanna put them
in an area where there were mosquitoes,
but Lisianski could be an appropriate place
for the short term, we need to have those discussions.
Another option for the main Hawaiian Islands
to get them on a second high island
could be Kaho'olawe.
For the Laysan finch, it's present on Laysan,
it's a low island,
it's not resistant to sea level rise, obviously,
so we need to get that bird on two high islands.
We know the bird was present on Oahu and on Molokai,
so we could put that bird on both of those islands
inside a predator-proof fence, for example,
at Kaʻena on Oʻahu, and at the Mokio predator-proof fence
that is under construction right now on Molakaʻi.
Those would be appropriate places.
And, since I forgot to mention to everyone
that the finches appear to eat anything.
Our joke is that they eat dirt.
When we're on the islands we think that
they would do well in most translocated areas.
Okay, and then the Nihoa millerbird,
it is present on the high island of Nihoa
and low island Laysan now, and so if we moved it
to Lehua, we now have rats eradicated,
we're able to control mosquitoes in that area.
We can translocate it to Lehua
and then it's possible that these birds could be downlisted.
There are unknowns related to
translocations to the main Hawaiian Islands.
One of the main things that that we're concerned about
is how long will it take to create safe places
in the main Hawaiian Islands?
We have some predator free areas,
but we need successful mosquito control.
Those techniques are under development right now.
They may be available within the next five years,
but they will be prioritized in high elevation areas
in the main Hawaiian Islands to protect those birds.
Like the ʻakikiki that I mentioned at first,
those birds could be going extinct in the next five years,
so those areas need mosquito control first.
Another unknown is because the millerbirds,
they're not Hawaiian honeycreepers
and they colonized in a different manner,
they could be resistant to avian malaria.
So if we wanted to move millerbirds
before mosquito control was in place,
or we needed to, for some reason, we could do it,
what's called a challenge experiment
where we get a limited number of birds
and expose them to infected mosquitoes
and see if they show symptoms of avian malaria.
Other things that would have to be carefully analyzed
are indirect effects to the receiving ecosystems
for where the birds will be translocated to,
and then also public sentiment on this.
Obviously we would need public support
and we would want everyone to be behind
any kind of translocations
to protect these birds from extinction.
Okay, so, the take home message is, we can recover.
We can get to a point where we can downlist and potentially
delist Papahānaumokuākea's endemic songbirds.
It's going to require regular, preferably annual monitoring,
which is no small feat
given how far and isolated these islands are
and how difficult it is to work in some of these locations.
We need to identify suitable high islands,
get to work to manage threats, remove predators,
control mosquitoes, and then we can use translocations
to establish populations on the safe high islands
and suitable low islands when needed
as is the case with the Nihoa finch
which as you recall is still just on a single island.
I know I talked a few times about avian malaria.
The islands in the Monument are far for most of us,
and it's difficult to get out there
and to see what's happening,
but there are things that you can do here in Hawai'i
and that is learn more about this approach
to control mosquitoes in the main Hawaiian Islands.
You can go to this website,
it's called birdsnotmosquitoes.org,
and you can learn all about what is happening
and how you can be involved and make this happen.
Because if we don't make this happen,
we're going to not only lose more of our forest birds
in the main Hawaiian Islands,
but we also could lose our forest birds
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
So I just wanted to acknowledge a few people.
Chris Farmer and Rachel Rounds are collaborators
on all of this work
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
Sheila Conant, who was my PhD advisor,
provided information on the historical translocations.
Megan Laut at US Fish and Wildlife Service
provided draft recovery criteria.
Amanda Boyd and James Kwon provided the data
from Pearl and Hermes in 2018.
We didn't have any data from Pearl and Hermes
for like a decade, I think it was.
No, it was actually over a decade.
Beth Flint and Holly Freifeld
helped with background information.
and then I wanna thank Jared, Kate, Dan and Amanda
for support with all of this work,
behind the scenes support and logistical support.
Then with that,
I wanna answer any questions anybody has.
Justin: Great, thank you so much
for that insightful presentation.
I apologize, this is Justin, but my camera doesn't work,
but as long as you can hear me,
I'll start with a more general question.
Are there any volunteer or potential jobs
in relation to the translocation projects?
-: Yes.
If you are interested contact me and I will let you know.
We don't have anything that we're planning right now
for our Nihoa translocation, but I mean,
the first thing we need to tackle
is some of the compliance work.
We need to get the translocation out of our heads
and written on paper and then the NEPA,
which I'm sure this person who's asking this question
does not wanna write our NEPA document,
but we need help with that.
But yeah, if anyone wants to be involved, let me know.
We're doing two trips a year to Nihoa right now
to control cenchrus, which is an invasive grass.
We often have a hard time finding people to come.
So if you're interested in that, just let me know.
-: And billy goat, you forgot to mention that part.
-: Say that again?
-: And to be part billy goat.
-: And to love the idea of ramming a Zodiac onto the rocks
in between waves and jumping off the island,
because that's how the landing is.
-: Let's see. One question we have here is,
are there any concerns about competition
with main Hawaiian Islands species
being stressed by any of these translocations?
-: That's a great question,
and that is something that we're more concerned about
when we talk about translocating honeycreepers
in the main islands from say, like Hawai'i
to the Big Island, that would be more of a concern there,
and the reason it's not so much of a concern
for the birds in Papahānaumokuākea
is because those birds are gonna be going to
coastal lowland sites
where we have no native songbirds left anywhere really,
except for maybe a couple of places around the Big Island
where there might be some 'apapane,
But we have no birds left, and it's comical.
As we talk about this,
I'm watching this bulbul hunt on my lanai,
so it would not be an issue into the lowlands.
I have this vision that,
and I'm sure it's shared by a lot of people,
once we're able to control mosquitoes,
we might have some of our native birds,
the few that are left,
they might be able to come down
from these high elevations where they're stuck,
because that's the only place there's no mosquitoes.
So, once mosquitoes are controlled,
we're hoping they can expand their range
down to lower elevation sites,
and that would be as someone who's lived here,
20-something years,
I can't tell you how amazing it would be
to see a 'apapane on my lanai instead of a bulbul.
-: Sheldon, is it okay, you had mentioned
people should contact you
about the volunteering and other stuff.
Is it okay for us to post your email here in the chat?
-: Yeah, you can do it.
Post my official Fish and Wildlife Service email,
and you can find it online.
-: Okay, great.
The next question is, well, first of all,
great presentation and information, thank you.
Are there chances of protecting
some of the named species without relocation?
-: Yeah, so right now, if those species,
a species like Nihoa finch is just on Nihoa,
so we're basically could be,
we are one rat introduction
or one yellow crazy ant introduction away
from losing everything on that island.
We're up there every year and we hope that we would see
something like that and we have
biosecurity protocols in place, but ants are easy to miss,
and also the storm, just stochastic events,
having all your eggs, literally in one basket on Nihoa
is definitely not a way to recover that species.
It's going to need to be translocated,
to increase the population and the range so that we can
reduce extinction risks for those species.
And unfortunately, the only high islands
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
are Nihoa and Mokumanamana.
So given that the current projected climate change models
that we're all aware of, and I know
that Dan gave a talk last month,
those islands are gonna be underwater.
Pearl and. Hermes is pretty much barely habitable right now
and Laysan's gonna get there sometime in the future.
It might be a hundred years, it might be 200 years,
but it's gonna happen.
-: Yeah, and kind of relation to the mosquito issue.
There's a few questions around
what are the mosquito control procedures?
And then there's another question about this whole project
to genetically modify mosquitoes, to make them sterile,
or they introduced sterile males.
So if you could talk a little bit about that problem,
I think there was mosquito control procedures
was related to lehua and then maybe the other
ones related to the main Hawaiian Islands.
-: Okay.
So the mosquito control technology
that's being worked on now is not genetic modification.
It's using a naturally occurring bacteria called wolbachia
that is present like we have a bunch of bacteria,
different species of bacteria in the us, mosquitoes do too,
and if you introduce a different bacteria into mosquitoes,
then it can make them sterile,
and so that is what ha what's happening now.
So we have a bunch of different mosquitoes
in the main Hawaiian Islands.
All of them are introduced.
We have no native mosquitoes,
just like we have no native ant species.
So, the one mosquito that is spreading avian malaria
is called Culex quinquefasciatus, and so,
the scientists that are working in the mosquito lab
are just introducing this other wolbachia,
this other strain of wolbachia to the mosquitoes
that would make them sterile.
So the idea would be to release males
in the areas where we wanted to do mosquito control.
They would mate with females
and would not produce viable offspring.
So that's the idea.
It's gonna take a lot of work
and there's a chance it might not even work,
which is super scary because we don't have a lot of
different options for mosquito control.
Obviously spraying them with pesticides
and things like that is not an option,
but this is a way
where you would not have to spray any pesticides.
You would not be putting
anything harmful into the environment.
So it's the best option we have right now.
-: Okay. This one goes a little different direction.
How distinct are the two finches genetically,
is that known and how about compared to
the main Hawaiian island species
and then related to that...
Well, I'll stop there, that's probably enough.
-: That's a good question,
and I don't know the answer to that.
I know that I think the two finches look very similar,
and so I am guessing that they're closely related,
but I don't know if, if there have,
I don't think there's been genetics done
looking at the differences.
I know for the millerbirds,
the Laysan millerbird and the Nihoa millerbird
were subspecies, so they're the same species,
but were split out to subspecies,
but there had been some argument
that they should be a full species.
So I guess my answer to that is they're closely related,
but how closely, I should not be talking about
because I don't really know.
-: Awesome.
Now, I'll just take two more questions.
So, looks like a friend of yours, Kiefer,
asks if there's any captive breeding,
any bird captivity and safely reproduce,
or I guess so any captive breeding programs
and are they able to reproduce?
-: Yeah, so the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,
because their populations are relatively stable,
but they are at risk, we don't have any
captive breeding projects happening with them.
For the birds in the main Hawaiian Islands,
like the Kiwikiu or Maui Parrotbill,
or the ʻakikiki also called the Kauaʻi creeper
or the ʻakekeʻe those birds are probably going to disappear
within the next five years unless we do something about it,
and so there is a move towards deciding which birds
and how many we want to get in captive breeding.
If there are some present in captive breeding,
like ʻakikiki has some, if we want to expand,
but unfortunately, a bird like the 'akeke'e,
which I know is not a topic of this of this talk,
but feel free to look it up.
It's one of those weird birds that's not super territorial.
It has flocking behavior,
and so it hasn't done well in captivity,
and so captivity is not an option for that bird,
really translocation to some suitable habitat
on the Big Island might be the only hope for that bird.
-: Okay, and I'm gonna end with a question
I know has a little bit of a happy answer to it.
What does Laysan island or Kauō
look like now after the historical habitat destruction?
Does it have a functioning ecosystem?
-: That is a great question,
and of course probably would depend
on who you talk to because ecosystem restoration
assumes that you understood
how that ecosystem functioned prior to the perturbation.
So we don't really understand how Laysan's ecosystem
was functioning prior to the 1800s.
We don't even know what native insects were lost,
we don't even know what native plants were lost,
but I can tell you that there that Laysan is amazing.
It's dominated by native species.
Yes, it is missing whatever has fallen extinct,
but we are translocating not only birds there.
Fish and Wildlife Service has translated some,
some Pritchardia remota or Loulu back there,
and some other plant species,
and the millerbird is doing well.
So we are making steps in the right direction,
at Laysan, but we'll never have it functioning
the way it was functioning
prior to all of that resource exploitation
in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
But Andy, sorry, that's a negative.
It is beautiful and amazing now
and filled with life and native plants and animals.
-: Great. Thank you.
A good thing to remember.
Laysan is certainly a quote unquote "hope spot"
for a restoration in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,
such incredible work over decades and decades,
just to restore the native vegetation to that island
is absolutely phenomenal.
The successes there have been just amazing.
So mahalo, mahalo, mahalo Sheldon.
That was a wonderful talk.
Thank you so much and great questions everybody.
We had 147 people listening in on our talk
and I am going to share a few closing slides
before we end it,
but thank you so much for your talk.
So this webinar was recorded
and it will be posted to our archive site,
and that's the one that's the URL right there,
the website for that.
But if you just type in ONMS webinars
O, M, N, S, webinar, that'll take you to it.
We have, oh gosh, I don't know,
we've done 15 or so of these during the pandemic,
you could practically take a course in Papahānaumokuākea
by watching all those wonderful talks
from so many different presenters.
So please check it out and we'll have this one up there
within about a week and a half.
We have to, for the Americans with Disabilities Act,
we have to caption it
so that everybody can enjoy it, but it takes a little time.
You will get a certificate of attendance
from attending this,
it's for one hour of professional development,
and you'll have that in your email by tomorrow.
We also have our next webinar in October.
This kind of focuses a good segue from Sheldon's talk
because they've done some translocations of Laysan ducks
to Kure Atoll, and so,
we have Cynthia Vanderlip and the State of Hawai'i
Division of Forestry and Wildlife.
She's the Kure Biological Field Station Supervisor,
and it's been, gosh, she's been working up there for,
I don't know, 30, 40 years, a long time.
So she will talk about Kure Atoll Seabird Sanctuary.
You will see an email for this advertising this pretty soon,
but that's next month, October 21st.
So hopefully we can see you there
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