In her comments on the draft environmental assessment outlining options for the Po`ouli, Sheila Conant, professor of biology at the University of Hawai`i and a well-known expert on Hawaiian birds, favors the no-action alternative. “The only other alternative I would find acceptable is … bringing the birds into captivity immediately,” she writes. Here are her reasons:
I can no longer, as I have in the past, condone a species-specific approach to the conservation of our endemic biota, no matter how charismatic the species may be, nor how dire its predicament is.
Since I became interested in the biology and conservation of Hawaiian birds 35 years ago, I have watched one bird species after another decline and go extinct. I have simultaneously watched idealistic but underfunded government agencies launch program after program to save species on the brink. In my humble opinion, these programs have been, without exception, too little too late.
At the very least, we must stop pretending that hatching the eggs of a handful of endangered birds and hacking the young back into dying forests will save those species from extinction, no matter how well we do it. At minimum we should redirect our avian conservation program resources towards habitat management to control predators, disease vectors, and other destructive alien species.
Today the cost of avian captive propagation dwarfs the resources we invest in all programs directed at no-avian Hawaiian species by comparison. Let us turn our attention and more than a few tens of thousands of dollars to the more than 300 listed endangered plants and the hundreds and hundreds of biologically, though not yet legally listed, endangered species of invertebrates and plants that have received so little attention and support.
I remember when there were over 100 `Alala, I remember visiting the Alaka`i when every dead snag in the bog had a Kama`o or `O`u perched atop it, and the last pair of `O`o`a`a awakened us each morning with their beautiful and haunting duets. These last three are gone now. I am greatly saddened and more than discouraged by the losses we have experienced, as well as by our inability to learn from our failures at conservation. As biologists and managers we have not acted soon enough, nor in great enough measure, nor in the right direction. It is time to stop our futile attempts to plug the holds in a crumbling dike. It’s time to put our efforts, our dollars, our minds, and our hearts into conserving ecosystems.
Volume 9, Number 5 November 1998
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