Maui Is No Longer Safe For Hawaii’s Endangered Birds, Biologists Say … New refuges are sought as scientists battle disease-carrying mosquitoes in the face of a changing climate.
Mosquitoes have eliminated the last safe place for endangered forest birds on Maui, and the only solution may require releasing millions more mosquitoes.
Climate change has made once-uninhabitable higher altitudes now amenable to mosquitoes that infect the kiwikiu, or Maui parrotbill, with avian malaria at greater rates. Transmission of the disease has driven the bird population down to around 150, a number that places them at the edge of extinction, scientists said.
After a failed effort in 2019 to translocate kiwikiu from one side of Haleakala to the other — avian malaria still killed the birds — conservationists and officials are now pursuing two plans: Capture and ship a small group of kiwikiu to mainland zoos to breed the next generation, and cut down the mosquito population with what’s come to be called “mosquito birth control.”
