Hawaiian Crows Return to the Wild, The place They Are ‘Guides to Souls’

In Hawaiian custom, the souls of the useless journey to the afterlife by leaping from cliffside promontories known as “leaping places” into Pō, the swirling sea of time the place gods and forebearers dwell. However with out the steerage of an‘aumakua—an ancestral spirit that can take the form of an animal—the dead can’t make the leap. With out their ‘aumakua, these lost souls are doomed to an eternity of wandering and hunger, chasing moths and crickets for sustenance forever.

For decades, one important guide of souls has been absent from Hawaiian skies: the ‘alalā, a crow species native only to the islands, has been extinct in the wild since 2002. Multiple attempts to reintroduce captive-born ‘alalā to Hawaii’s Huge Island have been unsuccessful, largely due to the ‘io, or Hawaiian hawk, the ‘alalā’s final surviving pure predator.

However now new hope is taking wing: a recent class of 5 younger ‘alalā has been released into the wild on the slopes of the Haleakalā volcano on the island of Maui, where ‘io are absent.

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“Conservation doesn’t occur in a single day,” says Hannah Bailey, conservation program supervisor for the Hawaiian Endangered Birds Program at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. “We’re still learning, and so are the birds.”

The ‘alalā, which resembles a raven more than a crow, is the most endangered corvid in the world and one of just two corvid species known for widespread tool use. It’s additionally among the many chattiest corvids, with greater than 50 documented calls, and it’s referred to in Hawaiian mythology because the “bird with the big voice.” The ‘alalā is an omnivore, and its diet mostly consists of fruit and insects gleaned from the forest understory, but it also eats flower petals, nectar, mice and the nestlings of smaller birds.

To Hawaiians, the ‘alalā is an ‘aumakua “who functions as a guardian, guide and protector,” says kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who specializes in moʻolelo, or the traditional knowledge that includes folklore and mythology. “ʻAumākua often appear in dreams [or] visions or called out to the people they protected to warn of danger or sometimes to scold them for wrongdoing.”

“Because there is a familial and symbiotic relationship, people did not harm or eat their ‘aumākua but fed them and helped them when in need,” she adds.

It became clear the ‘alalā were “in need” when the population plummeted in the 1970s and 1980s. Avian malaria, invasive predators such as feral cats, and habitat loss caused by the expansion of cattle ranches had reduced the population to just a few dozen individuals. Scientists with the state of Hawaii began pulling eggs from nests in the mid-1970s to create a genetic ark in captivity.

Today two captive breeding centers operated by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance are home to more than 100 ‘alalā—but a stable population in captivity is a world away from the wild, Bailey explains. Reintroduction is a messy process when animals are several generations away from living in nature. That’s very true when the threats that introduced the inhabitants to its knees are nonetheless current.

Previous reintroduction attempts in the 1990s and again in the late 2010s saw high fatality rates. Some birds seemed to die from malnutrition, whereas others contracted toxoplasmosis or avian pox. Over the years, ‘io have taken down at least 16 released ‘alalā and caused conservationists to abort reintroductions. Though those losses were “heartbreaking,” Bailey says, “I caution people against saying these were failures. The amount of information we learned—about behavior, bonds between the groups, even food and resource usage—that’s all so beneficial to creating our future plans.”

The 5 birds launched in Maui are between a 12 months and a 12 months and a half outdated—a window the place the birds are at “a particularly good age for learning how to navigate new things,” Bailey says. “You can kind of think of them as a rambunctious group of teenagers at the moment.”

Bailey and her group purposefully cluster hatchings to create a “class” of nestlings of an analogous age “because we want them to form social relationships,” she says. Scientists aren’t positive whether or not ‘alalā form large social groups or prefer to keep to themselves outside of mating season, but Bailey says she hopes they’ll band collectively to fend off predators by “mobbing” them like different corvid cousins do.

There’s a transparent energy dynamic within the cohort of two females and three males. “The females are a little pushy,” Bailey says. “Even though they’re younger, they’re just like, ‘Nope, we’ve got this. This is how you do things.’” They usually’re virtually at all times proper, she says.

From a younger age, the birds have been launched to native Hawaiian meals sources, together with insect species and fruits. A comparatively new addition to their coursework is antipredator coaching: the younger crows have been taught to acknowledge ‘io, barn owls, and house cats and to associate them with alarm calls from adult ‘alalā. “If they didn’t reply correctly, that lowered their possibilities of being within the launch cohort,” Bailey says.

Earlier than being helicoptered to the Maui launch web site, the graduating birds acquired a standard blessing from hula grasp Kapono‘ai Molitau, who spoke of the importance of ‘alalā as “hulu kūpuna,” or honored elders. The class of crows then spent several weeks acclimating in outdoor aviaries on the slopes of Maui before their release into a remote forest reserve.

Initially, the birds will have food dropped off for them to ease their transition to self-sufficiency. This new class will also be outfitted with tracking harnesses, which will allow the researchers to follow their movements—or learn their fates.

What does success look like for this cohort? Bailey says it doesn’t imply establishing a wild breeding inhabitants straight away. “We want to see them using the landscape well,” she says. “We want to see survival.”