The news articles (as distinct from scientific, peer-reviewed articles) in both Science and Nature focused on the work of Leonard Freed, a professor of zoology at the University of Hawai`i, Manoa, his wife, Rebecca Cann, a professor of cell and molecular biology at UH, and other members of Freed’s research team, mostly graduate students. For the better part of two decades, Freed has been studying the Hawai`i `akepa (Loxops coccineus), a finch-sized bird found only in forests of the Big Island.
But while Freed may have been generating news, his views about the parlous state of the `akepa and the threats posed by the Japanese white-eye (Zosterops japonicus) are shared by few, if any, of his peers.
In fact, aside from Freed, nearly all of the scientists most familiar with the problems faced by Hawai`i’s endangered birds seem to agree that, if anything, the `akepa population at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, the site of Freed’s work, is “stable or increasing.” That was the conclusion of most participants in a two-day workshop convened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last fall to “clarify the current status of the Hawai`i `akepa and other endangered Hawaiian forest birds at the Refuge,” in light of “contradictory information over the population status of the Hawai`i `akepa in a portion” of the refuge.
The Nature news article, by reporter Rex Dalton, refers to long-standing ill-will between Freed and his team, on the one hand, and refuge administration, especially Jack Jeffrey. “Clashes between academics and conservation managers are not uncommon,” Dalton writes, “but rarely do relations become quite so strained.”
“Since 2006, Freed has not been granted permits to work in the reserve because of the ongoing disputes,” Dalton writes. “When Freed asked graduate students to follow the birds instead, Richard Waas [sic], the refuge manager at the time, demanded that they stop, saying they did not have the necessary permits. Refuge officials then threatened to call law-enforcement rangers.” [See first note, below.]
Both Wass and Jeffrey, famous for his photographs of Hawaiian birds, have retired from the Fish and Wildlife Service. And in January of this year, Freed’s appeal of the suspension of his last Fish and Wildlife permit – an Endangered Species Act section 10(a)(1)(A) recovery permit – was denied, based on Freed’s earlier loss of his permit to conduct research at the refuge.
Bad Blood
A review of records at the Fish and Wildlife Service does reveal a high level of disagreement between Freed, on the one hand, and service personnel and other experts in the field of Hawai`i avifauna, on the other. And, to be sure, there is some evidence of personal grudges having developed between refuge staff and Freed.
At one point, in late 2007, Freed complained to the service’s regional director in Portland, Oregon, that more than 12 years earlier, refuge staff had denied his mother permission to visit Hakalau. When the refuge staff was asked to explain this, Wass replied that no one could remember such an event, but that “it was and is our policy to minimize personal visits to areas of the refuge that are off limits to public entry… That said, we do give permission for occasional visits by family members, etc. If Lenny asked permission tomorrow for his mother to visit the Refuge, I would probably say ‘yes.’ If Lenny was told ‘no’ in 1995, our motive could not have been construed to be retaliatory because our relationship was good at that time.” [See second note, below.]
This was not the first time Freed had complained about his mother being denied permission to visit the refuge. In 2006, in the course of appealing Wass’s denial of a permit to conduct research at Hakalau, Freed told then-regional director David Allen that refuge staff was behaving “irrationally.” Personal animus, he suggested, was one possible reason, “and the evidence for this is that they have let the parents of my students and interns onto the refuge, but not my mother.”
So what – or, rather, what else – caused the relationship to head south?
One of the greatest problems, at least as evidenced in the review of Fish and Wildlife Service records, was what might be called a blood feud. Starting in 1988 and continuing throughout the 1990s, Freed’s permits at Hakalau allowed him to take samples of blood from the birds captured in mist-nets. More than 4,000 such samples were taken and put into storage at the University of Hawai`i.
In June 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional recovery division chief sent a letter to Freed, expressing concern that of the samples collected since 1988, only 20 to 25 percent had been analyzed.
The Hakalau refuge staff was not confident in the methodology Freed was proposing to use to analyze the blood for evidence of disease and for genetic analysis. So it contracted the U.S. Geological Survey’s Biological Resource Discipline (BRD) to conduct a blind test of Freed’s preferred method (which his wife developed) against two other methods. Although Freed agreed to use the best method as identified in the BRD report, when the report was released in September 2003, Freed filed a grievance. This resulted in the report being pulled back for revision. In the meantime, Freed had begun to have the samples analyzed according to his preferred method.
The cover page on the “final” USGS report tells a bit more of the story: “First Revision April 2004; Second Revision August 2004; Third Revision November 2004; Final Revision December 2004.”
By mid-2005, the situation was confused enough to require a summit meeting of sorts. In July, Fish and Wildlife Service refuge staff met with Freed, Freed’s department chair, Sheila Conant, and the Manoa vice chancellor for research and graduate education, Gary K. Ostrander, at the Hakalau refuge’s office in Hilo. According to a write-up of the meeting by Barry Stieglitz, head of refuges in the Pacific Islands, “UH and BRD have an already signed agreement to cost share an independent study to determine the most appropriate analytical methodology for the past (and any future) blood samples.” (A scientist in Sweden, Staffan Bensch, had agreed to undertake this task, and his report was expected within a few months of the meeting. His conclusions mirrored those of the USGS report, written by William Steiner, former head of the USGS BRD Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center.)
Stieglitz also wrote that Ostrander acknowledged that Freed had to bear “some responsibility in failure to complete past reporting requirements, etc., as well as acknowledging a lack of rigor in some of the ongoing research. Similarly, I acknowledged that we … had acted as ‘enablers’ by not holding Dr. Freed’s feet to the fire in the past on reporting requirements, etc.”
As part of the “course of action” that, in Stieglitz’s view, the meeting had led up to, Freed was to be informed that his “past proposals included analysis of blood samples, and that regardless of which methodology is selected … the Service should not be financially responsible for analyses.”
In 2007, Freed finally submitted a report on 428 samples taken from endangered birds at Hakalau (noting that 117 endangered bird blood samples were lost when Cann’s laboratory was damaged when devastating floods hit the university in October 2004).
Wass wanted to know what happened to the other samples, taken from species of non-endangered birds. “I request that you update your response to my [2002] request for information about blood samples collected … since 1988. Please list all samples collected by species and year. Note whether they are currently in your possession, lost, or consumed by analysis… For samples that have not been analyzed, describe your plans and proposed schedule for analysis.”
Freed replied by email that he “should have the data you request ready in a few weeks” and that “We have prepared archival quality DNA from almost all of the samples.” But as recently as May 2008, acting refuge manager James Glynn wrote Freed, again requesting “that you provide the information … regarding the blood samples collected since 1988 at Hakalau Forest NWR.” Glynn reminded Freed that the blood analyses were required as a condition of the Special Use Permits Freed had been granted and that reports on those permits would be considered incomplete “until blood analysis is completed and incorporated in the final report.” As of mid-March, the refuge was still waiting to receive the report on blood analyses.
In an email to Environment Hawai`i, Freed said that he had finished analyzing “most of the blood samples that survived the flood.” He went on to blame Jeffrey for slow progress on this front: “Jack Jeffrey commanded us to not analyze the blood samples until they approved the methodology. It took them 7 months to approve it after Staffan Bensch, a Swedish avian malariologist, stated that any protocol could be used… We lost $50,000 of our grant money that was allocated to finish the analyses.”
As to the reviews of Freed’s report on the 428 samples he had analyzed, well, they were scathing. Wrote one (someone not on the Fish and Wildlife Service payroll, nor a member of the Forest Bird Recovery Team): “In my opinion, it is post-hoc science at its worst … and provides little to nothing useful to management. The report suffers from grammar and formatting errors, often unintelligible writing, misuse of statistics and wild speculation – in all honesty, I’ve graded … lab reports that were far better. Unfortunately, I’ve reviewed a number of similarly poor-quality documents produced by Dr. Freed.”
Another reviewer touched on Freed’s bringing into the picture the grudge match he’d been waging over proper analytical methods for the samples: “The description of the methods used for collecting and preserving blood samples makes it seem the methods used by the authors are superior to those used by other researchers,” a claim rejected by the Steiner and Bensch reports. This reviewer also noted that the “sample sizes used for `akepa are quite small… Many conclusions in the report are minimally supported because of the limited sample sizes or flawed because species status or condition is based on phenology [stage in the breeding cycle or other natural cycle] rather than more direct measures.”
Permission Denied
Starting around 2005, Freed had begun a campaign to save the `akepa – and, at the same time, impugn the competence of refuge staff. For example, in the October 2005 edition of `Elepaio, the publication of the Hawai`i Audubon Society, Freed wrote, “’the decline of this bird since 1999 is associated with a significant increase in numbers of introduced Japanese white-eyes compared with earlier years in the study… Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, with about 70 percent of Hawai`i `Akepa remaining on the island of Hawai`i, has chosen not to manage Japanese White-eyes. The refuge has also directed Dr. Freed to remove all artificial nesting cavities, despite the higher nesting success of Hawai`i `Akepa that used them…. The reasons given by the refuge for discontinuing their use will be contested.”
Yet the Hawai`i Forest Bird Recovery Team, which advises the refuge on questions of management, was not persuaded by Freed’s data, which, according to the team leader, Eric VanderWerf, a Fish and Wildlife Service ornithologist (and former student of Freed’s), was in need of “more careful analysis.” “If his conclusions were backed up by a solid analysis, I agree it would be a huge cause for concern,” VanderWerf told Environment Hawai`iin 2006, when Freed’s work was first addressed in this newsletter. But few of Freed’s peers were distressed by his findings, “which reflects a lack of confidence in his methodology and conclusions,” VanderWerf said.
Freed’s request in 2005 for three more permits to conduct research on the `akepa at Hakalau were denied by Wass, whose decision was upheld through several appeals from Freed.
Freed was not so easily daunted. In 2007, he again was seeking permission from Wass to research “the causes of food limitation in the Hawai`i `akepa and other native species: roles of an introduced competitor and ectoparasites.”
Again, Wass asked the Forest Bird Recovery Team to review Freed’s proposal. “All but one team member thought there was little or no evidence that show the population of Hawai`i `akepa has ‘crashed,’” according to a summary of the team’s work. “One reviewer thought data presented was inadequate to address this question, and only selected data sets and analyses are presented to support the specific hypothesis…. All but one team member thought there was little or no evidence that show the population of Hawai`i `akepa is severely food limited…. All but one reviewer thought there was little or no evidence that show ectoparasites have severely lowered the survival of adult Hawai`i `akepa.” (The “one reviewer” consistently dissenting could have been Freed, who is a member of the team.)
Wass denied Freed the permit he had sought, citing the recovery team views as well as “reservations by refuge staff over potential shortcomings of the proposed research, and concerns expressed by former Regional Director David Allen regarding relevance to refuge and species management and rigor of scientific design.”
Freed appealed to Stieglitz, arguing that the `akepa faced “incipient extinction” following an “environmental change,” that is, “an increase in Japanese white-eyes and in chewing lice.”
“I am not going to deal with the comments of the Hawai`i Forest Bird Recovery Team here,” Freed said in his appeal. “They will be embarrassed enough when the incipient extinction paper comes out. If the appeal reaches the regional director, I will recommend that he dissolve the recovery team and form a new one.”
Stieglitz rejected Freed’s appeal in September 2007. Freed appealed then to the regional FWS director, Ren Lohoefener, in Portland.
Rather than uphold the decisions of lower-level managers, Lohoefener met with Freed in Honolulu. Freed agreed to have Michael Scott, of the U.S. Geological Survey’s BRD in Moscow, Idaho, assess whether the `akepa population had indeed crashed. Lohoefener, in turn, agreed to postpone any decision on Freed’s appeal until Scott had answered the question: “Has the Hawai`i `akepa population declined on Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge?”
Scott submitted his report to Lohoefener in March 2008. He had sent material relating to 21 years of population data on the `akepa and white-eye to eight independent reviewers, drawing on data from both the USGS and Freed. As to the population status of the `akepa, Scott wrote, “There was a preponderance of evidence and opinion that there was no discernable trend in the numbers of `akepa for the period of the surveys 1987-2007.” One reviewer, Scott wrote, stated, “The data are not going to convince anyone that there is a major problem.” He added, “The drop in numbers by 50 percent from 2004 to 2006 was short of the low numbers recorded in the 90s and followed by a significant increase in the density reported for 2007.”
Similarly, Scott’s experts could find no evidence that the presence of Japanese white-eye was stressing the `akepa. “Several reviewers commented that there were indications that if anything the populations were tracking each other and increases in numbers of white-eye were coincident with increases in the numbers of `akepa.”
Scott concluded by noting that the census data alone cannot provide an answer to the question he had been given.
A Workshop
On March 25, 2008, Lohoefener wrote to Freed, attaching Scott’s report. “Based on these reviews,” Lohoefener said, “I do not believe that the research methods you proposed are likely to produce the results needed to address the population status of the `akepa and whether there is inter-specific competition with the Japanese white-eye… at this time I concur with the decisions by the Refuge Manager and Supervisor of Pacific Island refuges to not issue you a research permit based on the research proposal you submitted.”
However, he continued, the service would be conducting a workshop to address research needs at the refuge and “I will ensure you are invited to participate…. Future research proposals you may submit will be welcomed and objectively reviewed.”
Freed did participate in the workshop, held October 8-9 in Hilo. In fact, most of the discussion – to the disappointment of many of the 37 scientists who participated – was centered on his claims about the `akepa. Freed made his arguments (in two different presentations) that the health of populations of `akepa – indeed, of all native birds at Hakalau – were being threatened by chewing lice and competition from Japanese white-eye, and that the decline might be masked by inappropriate census methods.
But, according to the write-up of the workshop by Scott, Freed’s dire warnings were contradicted by other presenters. Thane Pratt, of the USGS BRD, reported that his agency had analyzed forest bird survey data since 1976, and that those data show “one consistent theme: forest bird populations in managed areas are stable or increasing; forest bird populations in non-managed areas are stable or decreasing.” Richard Camp, also of the BRD, showed that long-term trends for `akepa and all other native forest birds were stable at Hakalau, although short-term trajectories in some areas showed a decline. “We advise caution on relying on short-term trajectories to assess population status,” he said, adding that Hawai`i `akepa “showed stable to increasing densities over the study time period.”
Edward Garton, of the Department of Fish and Wildlife at the University of Idaho, directly challenged Freed’s claims that the white-eye competed for food with the `akepa. Looking at the question of competition through the lens of four different models, Garton concluded that each model showed “different levels of competition between `akepa and Japanese white-eyes, but none of these models show any significant effect.” In fact, contradicting Freed’s calls for removal of white-eyes from the refuge, Garton claimed that both “`akepa and Japanese white-eye densities increase with positive habitat changes” and that “removal of Japanese white-eyes will actually reduce `akepa densities.” If current management continues, he said, “it is unlikely that `akepa will go extinct within the next 30 years.”
At the end of the second day of the workshop, participants were asked to rank what they regarded as the most immediate threats to native birds at Hakalau. Parasites garnered two votes, and interspecific competition (i.e., competition between `akepa and white-eye) got just one – presumably Freed’s. By contrast, feral ungulates (i.e., pigs) received the highest number (24), lack of habitat was next (21 votes), invasive plants (12), and predation by rats was fourth (7 votes).
One of the workshop participants explained to Environment Hawai`i some of the reasons for rejecting Freed’s hypotheses: “There is no recent data on the diets of white-eyes and `akepa. These species probably do eat many of the same species of insects, but we don’t know that for sure and we don’t know how abundant the insects are. If insects are limited in supply, one might be able to infer competition, but one would also have to show that other birds (including native species like `amakihi and `apapane) are not influencing insect supply. The assertion that the `akepa and white-eye compete seems to be based mostly on Freed’s data that show that there are more white-eyes in his study area and fewer `akepa than there were before…
“Correlation does not equal causation,” this source went on to say. “Freed also asserts that `akepa are starving, but his sample sizes are small, and his study area is 33 hectares in a 13,400-hectare refuge. Even if just half of that is suitable habitat for `akepa, that’s still a huge area compared to Freed’s study site. Someone suggested to me that `akepa might be declining in Freed’s study area because they’ve been studied so intensely. I think most biologists would say that’s not likely, but I wonder what the ordinary person on the street would say.”
Environment Hawai`i asked Freed why he thought his ideas got so little traction at the workshop. Freed stated in an email reply: “I think the reason why participants at the meeting disagreed is because 90 percent of the talks emphasized the survey data indicating long-term stability. Except for one that showed that the last 8 years revealed declines in every native species, but that was dismissed in preference for the long-term set. Also, the incipient extinction paper and ectoparasite paper were in press but not published at the time of the meeting.” (The references are to “Incipient extinction of a major population of the Hawai`i `akepa owing to introduced species,” published in Evolutionary Ecology Research, and “Explosive increase in ectoparasites in Hawaiian forest birds,” published in the Journal of Parasitology.)
He indicated that he did not give much weight to the views of his local peers. “The national and international peer review is much deeper than local peer review,” he wrote. “Interspecific competition is a difficult topic. Everybody includes it in the laundry list of threats to the birds. We had to convince some very critical community ecologists that it was occurring at an unexpected strength” to get the papers published, he wrote.
After the workshop, the regional Fish and Wildlife Service office in Portland revisited Freed’s appeal of his permit denials by staff at the refuge and the Honolulu office. Freed had raised “several science issues and we delayed responding until we could arrange for an independent review of forest bird research needs and priorities,” wrote David Wesley, acting regional director in a letter to Freed on October 27. “We have subjected your research request to a thorough review by Service staff, the Hawai`i Forest Bird Recovery Team, an independent science advisory group, as well as the recent discussions among the leading experts in Hawaiian forest birds at the Hilo workshop. We have also evaluated your performance on previous permits. Based on this exhaustive analysis, I am denying your appeal.”
Last Licks
Freed may not have won over the workshop participants, and his permits to work at the refuge were history, but he continued his efforts to sway public opinion, getting Nature to publicize his dispute in the news article in its December 11 edition. The report drew an immediate comment from UH zoology professor Sheila Conant and David Duffy, professor of botany at UH. In a posting on the Nature website, they faulted reporter Dalton’s article, which, they wrote, “does not appear to approach the standards one might normally associate with Nature.” Among other things, they suggested that had Dalton reviewed results of other analyses of bird populations at Hakalau, he would not have so readily accepted Freed’s claims as gospel. “[I]f we are to have any hope of saving the `akepa and other Hawaiian species, we need to insist on the best possible science and science reporting, uncomfortable as the process may be,” they concluded. “We hope that Nature will be part of this process.”
Freed and Cann then posted their own 1600-word comment on points raised by Conant and Duffy – and many other grievances, almost all of them having their origin in the behavior of Jack Jeffrey.
Jeffrey, they wrote, was responsible for them not conducting timely analyses of the thousands of blood samples they have taken and he ignored their paper showing their method of blood analysis was superior to all others [see third note, below], he refused to let them collect bird lice, and he required them to remove the artificial nesting cavities for `akepa that Freed had put up, even though they had been used by “at least eight females, who nested more successfully than females using natural cavities.” (In an email, Freed acknowledged that he was precluded from collecting ectoparasites “by a special use permit condition that forbade us from doing so.”)
Freed also blamed Jeffrey for taking away “the $2 million field station” at Hakalau, built in the early 1990s by a grant that Freed and other UH scientists (including Conant) received with grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation. (The Hakalau facility is owned by the university and has not been taken away or appropriated by the Fish and Wildlife Service.)
None of the claims Freed makes is new, and none has gone unchallenged or unexplained over the years. The requirement that Freed remove the artificial cavities, for example, was a result of Freed’s having lost the permit allowing him to conduct studies on the impact of providing artificial nests for `akepa. (There was no requirement to remove artificial nests that were occupied.) The university did not lose use of its field station, although Freed can no longer use it unless he has a permit.
Freed said he had applied for several permits to control white-eyes at the refuge, to see if that improves the condition of the `akepa and other native species. They “were both dissed by the refuge, and the dissing was upheld by the project leader in Honolulu and the regional director in Portland,” he said.
“They are really going to regret the decisions they have made,” he concluded.
— Patricia Tummons
First Note: That did not stop Freed from pursuing his work at the refuge. In an article published last year, he writes: “All research was halted in July 2006, when [Freed] was threatened with arrest by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which suspended his endangered species permit. We observed birds for several days during 2007-2008 with visitors and students. We conducted replicate searches for `akepa and other endangered species … during late March and late May/early June 2008, with an additional search at the 1770 m [meter elevation] site during April.” See Leonard A. Freed, Rebecca L. Cann, and Gustav R. Bodner, “Incipient extinction of a major population of the Hawai`i `akepa owing to introduced species,” Evolutionary Ecology Research, 2008, 10: 931-965 (October 2008). In 2008, Freed had a permit that allowed him to lead educational tours at the refuge.
Second Note: Freed’s mother reappears in correspondence in 2007, when Freed opened a letter to refuge manager Richard Wass by stating: “I was in Cleveland attending my mother’s funeral when your letter denying the special use permit was mailed.” Freed’s article on incipient extinction was dedicated “to the memory of Alice W. Freed, who the USFWS would not allow to visit the refuge.”
Third Note: The paper Freed referred to was actually a “critical commentary” on blood analysis methods published in the Journal of Parasitology in 2003. A letter in FWS files from one of the journal’s reviewers noted that the paper “has proven to be a difficult contribution to get reviewed… [A]ltering the format a bit will reduce some of the evident bitterness in the current manuscript and will, in fact, be of much more help to the general readership than the current version, which has a bit too much of a diatribe in it.”
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