Kauai’s Forest Birds Suffer an Alarming Decline

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Hawaii Public Radio covers the most recent dramatic decline in Kauaʻi’s forest bird population in this important and timely article. The alarming decline has shifted the work of research and conservation teams to collecting eggs and adult ʻamakihi and ʻanianiau with the potential of translocating them to mosquito-free habitat on Maui and Hawaiʻi Island. You can read the full article here or listen to the conversation with KFBRP project leader, Cali Crampton.

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Call for Submissions – Art Exhibit: Wings and Woodlands: A Tribute to Native Birds and Forests 🎨🕊️

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Donate or Walk with KFBRP at the 2026 Kauaʻi Charity Walk!

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KFBRP is excited to be a part of the 2026 Kauaʻi Visitor Industry Charity Walk on
Saturday, May 2 at 7:00 AM at Vidinha Stadium!

This event is a great way to support our efforts to protect Kauaʻi’s endangered forest birds—and enjoy a fun morning walk through Līhu‘e with friends,’ohana and fellow conservation supporters.

Here’s how you can help:
1️⃣ Donate to support our Charity Walk team.
2️⃣ Register to walk with us! The $50 registration includes a t-shirt and breakfast.
3️⃣ If you’re walking, invite friends and ‘ohana to support your efforts through the event’s online tools.

The best part? Every dollar raised will be matched—dollar for dollar—by the event’s proceeds!

It’s a powerful way to make twice the impact for Kauaʻi’s native species.

👉REGISTER OR DONATE HERE.

Mahalo for standing with us and helping to protect the birds that make our island home so special.

Community Volunteers Needed for Citizen Science Project: Mosquito Monitoring on West Kaua‘i

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The Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project is launching a Citizen Science Mosquito Monitoring Project and is seeking community volunteers living between Kalaheo and Kekaha to participate.

This pilot project will run from April through May 26, 2026, with an additional session planned for Fall 2026.

Why Monitor Mosquitoes?

Mosquitoes are a key factor in the transmission of avian malaria, a disease that affects native forest birds. Understanding which mosquito species are present, where they occur, and how their populations change over time is essential for informing conservation strategies and mosquito control efforts on Kaua‘i.

Community participation allows us to expand monitoring efforts across a wider geographic area than would otherwise be possible.

What Volunteers Will Do

Participants will:

  • Set up a small GAT Trap outside their home or yard
  • Use non-toxic, hay-infused water to attract mosquitoes
  • Leave the trap out for 3–4 days each week over a one-month period
  • Return collection cards to the project team in Kaumakani

The traps are safe, simple to use, and require minimal time commitment. All volunteers will receive training and guidance from project staff. For more information on the traps, please watch this video.

Project Goals

This project aims to:

  • Identify mosquito species and relative abundance
  • Map mosquito distribution across West Kaua‘i
  • Track seasonal and spatial changes in mosquito populations
  • Provide data to support mosquito control and conservation planning
  • Foster community engagement in local science and conservation

Who Can Participate

Residents living between Kalaheo and Kekaha are eligible to join.

Get Involved

If you are interested in contributing to this community science effort, please fill out the interest form.

Mahalo for your interest in supporting conservation through community-based science.

DINE FOR A CAUSE – ALL FEBRUARY LONG

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We’re excited to share that we have been selected as the nonprofit recipient for proceeds from Table 53 at RumFire Poipu!
By dining at Table 53, you’re directly supporting efforts to protect Kauaʻi’s native forest birds and their habitats. It’s an easy (and delicious!) way to give back.
📞 Call RumFire (808-742-4RUM) to make your reservation and request Table 53, and dine knowing your meal is making a difference.
Mahalo for supporting bird conservation on Kauaʻi!

🐦 2025 Wings & Woodlands Art Exhibit

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YOU ARE INVITED!

Kaua‘i Society of Artists Gallery | Kukui Grove Center
Exhibit Dates: November 8–14, 2025

Opening Hours: 11/8 – 10am-3pm, 11/9 -11/13 – 12-6pm, 11/14 12-3pm
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7 at 6 PM

Celebrate Hawai‘i’s manu through art! The Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project and Birds, Not Mosquitoes are teaming up with the Kaua‘i Endangered Seabird Recovery Project and Trees for Honolulu’s Future to showcase the beauty and importance of Hawai‘i’s native birds.

🌿 Special Events

Friday, Nov 7 | 6 PM – Opening Reception (FREE!) – SIGN UP HERE
Join us for refreshments, a blessing, and the first look at this year’s inspiring bird art.

Saturday, Nov 8 | 10 AM–3 PM
• 10 AM Kahili Pa‘a Lima Workshop with Kumu Kaeo – $100 – SIGN UP HERE
• Kaua‘i Cultural Artists Guild Vendors on site

Sunday, Nov 9 | 1 PM
• Ni‘ihau Shell Earring Workshop with Hi‘ipoi Kanahele – $100 – SIGN UP HERE

Monday, Nov 10 | 4–6 PM
• Seabird Art Class – Free – SIGN UP HERE

Tuesday, Nov 11 | 4 -6 PM
• Sip & Paint with Kumu Kehaulani – $55–$65 – SIGN UP HERE

Wednesday, Nov 12 | 4–6 PM
• Forest Journaling Workshop with Kim Rogers – Free – SIGN UP HERE

Friday, Nov 14 | Exhibit closes at 3 PM
(Art pickup begins at 3 PM)

🌈 Keiki Art Contest: “WeTrees!”

Keiki in grades K–8 are invited to create art celebrating the importance of trees — vital homes for many of Hawai‘i’s birds. Select Kaua‘i entries will be featured in the Wings & Woodlands Exhibit.
Email artcontest@treesforhonolulu.org

RELEASING MOSQUITOES TO HELP KAUA‘I’S FOREST BIRDS

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ALAKAʻI PLATEAU, Kauaʻi – It seems counterintuitive to release hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes into an area where the insects are spreading avian malaria and bringing several species of Hawaiian honeycreepers to the precipice of extinction.

Nonetheless, staff from the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project (KFBRP) heralded Thursday’s first release of male mosquitoes, into a state forest reserve on the vast Alakaʻi Plateau, as momentous.

Ten years of planning, permitting and community outreach led the team and its partners, to the release of male mosquitoes that are reproductively incompatible with female mosquitoes, which bite and spread the often-deadly disease.

“Incompatible Insect Technology, or IIT, leads to mosquito population suppression, and we hope it will reduce the amount of avian malaria which is driving the declines of native forest birds,” explained Dr. Lisa ‘Cali’ Crampton, the head of KFBRP.

IIT has been deployed successfully around the world. This is the first time it’s been used on Kaua‘i as a biological control to try and severely reduce the number of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. “It is a tried and true and safe technique that has been used hundreds of times,” Crampton said.

The mosquitoes are flown from a facility in California and each week, half a million bugs will be loaded onto a helicopter in biodegradable cones that resemble an ice cream sugar cone.

The deployment helicopters are outfitted with a specially designed tube which directs each cone out of the bottom of the aircraft, where they float to the ground. “We do this twice a week to ensure there’s a very, very high likelihood that a wild female will encounter one of the incompatible males. We’re really trying to interrupt the reproductive cycle,” explained Crampton.

She says she is very hopeful, a sentiment shared by DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife planner Justin Hite. He spent a decade leading KFBRP field teams into the remote areas favored by species like the ‘akikiki and the ‘akeke’e, two of the honeycreepers with such low numbers they’re likely to completely disappear from the wilds in the next year or two.

Hite observed yesterday’s releases and said, “We hope this really moves the needle for these species.”

The bird recovery teams are employing what Crampton calls, “integrated pest management.” In addition to the IIT releases, they’re using a common larvicide known as BTi, which targets one phase of the mosquito life cycle – the larval phase. It’s been  used on the ground on the Alakaʻi for nine years, and over the past year it’s also been applied from helicopters. IIT targets the adult stage and the egg production stage. “So, the idea is the BTi reduces populations of adult mosquitoes to begin with, making it more likely that females will encounter one of these incompatible males,” according to Crampton.

The insurance they have for the continued existence of the most critically endangered birds, are conservation breeding populations. Crampton said that once IIT and BTi have been used for a year or so over the best forest bird habitat on Kaua‘i, they remain hopeful birds in the conservation programs, or their offspring will one day be released back into the wild.

# # #

RESOURCES

(All images/video Courtesy: DLNR)

HD video – Releasing Mosquitoes to Help Kaua‘i’s Forest Birds (web feature):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6hv63q7cz0cmra5grhlpj/IIT-Release-Kaua-i-Feb-13-2025.mov?rlkey=c6xk5tnaewj3bshe597btjmos&st=wy41ek9r&dl=0

 

HD video – First IIT releases on Kaua‘i media clips (Feb. 13, 2025):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xhkeb3tpvpnh570jx1a6w/Releasing-Mosquitoes-to-Protect-Kaua-i-s-Forest-Birds-Media-Clips-2-13-25.mov?rlkey=y62f8en2z7nbl8v5hrswhqh3u&st=kfs8zvo3&dl=0

 

Photographs – First IIT releases on Kaua‘i (Feb. 13, 2025):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/acq8elu7txlt7glmn6yku/AMAD6fGCxVlS25ryEWyKLUI?rlkey=b389cqjz3qi4osthdt43qeqyl&st=zprjpsww&dl=0

 

 

Media Contact:

Dan Dennison

Communications Director

Hawai‘i Dept. of Land and Natural Resources

DLNR.comms@hawaii.gov

BLESSING THE “BIRDS” CRITICAL TO SAVING KAUA‘I’S FOREST BIRDS

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BLESSING THE “BIRDS” CRITICAL TO SAVING KAUA‘I’S FOREST BIRDS

Annual Field Season Blessing Recognizes the Importance of Helicopters

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feb. 4, 2024

LĪHUʻE, Kaua‘i — In a hangar on the north end of the Līhuʻe International Airport, more than two dozen people gathered on Monday to bless the beginning of another field season

Typically, the annual blessings are conducted at Kōkeʻe, near the Alaka‘i Plateau where, for nearly 20 years, staff from the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project (KFBRP) have worked to save the island’s native forest birds from extinction.

Dr. Lisa ‘Cali’ Crampton leads KFBRP and says she has a real-world vision of how critical helicopters are to the mission.

“When we started doing all the work we do in the Alaka‘i the only air support we had was to get our food and our really heavy supplies in and out of the Alaka‘i and we did all the rest of the things we needed to do on foot,” Crampton said.

That involved commuting on foot over arduous terrain. Crampton says that took a major toll on workers and it reduced the time they spent in the field working with birds. She added, “Working with our partners to find the budget that we needed to be able to increase the amount of air support we have for our operations has been critical.”

Justin Hite, formerly with KFBRP, but now working as a planner with the DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW), echoed Crampton’s comments. “Physically, just getting to the different spots where the work’s going to take place is a two-hour drive, plus a seven-hour hike. To do the work in a productive way you’ve got to have air support,” Hite explained.

The helicopters will be especially indispensable this field season for a two-pronged mosquito control effort in Kaua‘i’s mountains, where forest bird populations have been decimated by the advance of avian malaria from lower elevations due to global warming.

Beginning next week, helicopters will begin dropping cones full of male mosquitoes that are incompatible with local females so their matings are inviable, thus reducing their population. For the past year teams have also used choppers to spread a biological larvicide, which is targeted bacteria to eliminate mosquito larvae in standing water.

“In the past we’ve tried to reduce populations with hand treatments and it’s like finding a needle in a haystack trying to find every little water source there is in the Alaka‘i Plateau because essentially it’s a swamp,” Crampton said.

Thirdly this season, helicopters will serve as a kind of intensive neo-natal care transport for the eggs of ‘anianiau as the team begins a conservation breeding program for the species to serve as an insurance population. “If we can’t get those eggs out in a timely fashion by helicopter, the program won’t work because it’s too dangerous and too time consuming to hike tiny little eggs out, Crampton explained

Hite and his 18-month-old daughter watched members of Ka ʻImi Naʻauao O Hawaiʻi Nei Institute perform ‘oli and chants to bless the upcoming field season. He said his daughter loves helicopters. “As soon as we pulled up here to the airport there were about five or six flying at once and she was spinning in all directions. She doesn’t call them helicopters yet. I think she calls all flying birds and other flying things nēnē,” Hite joked.

Staff from Jack Harter Helicopters joined the blessing. “It’s just been a great teamwork kind of thing. We just appreciate having you guys around, because you may know it or not, but Jack Harter died a few years ago,” said the company’s special projects director Casey Riemer.

“The first time I went flying with him, he talked about the birds in his narration. Talked about how they’re worried about the temperature rising high and the mosquitoes getting up there. So, now we’re doing something to help keep it from going further,” he added.

The company’s website even includes a tab where customers can donate to the cause. Full circle indeed.

 

# # #

 

RESOURCES

(All images/video courtesy: DLNR)

HD video – Birds for Birds-Blessing Kaua‘i Forest Bird Field Season (web feature)

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/svslsxm5txcjuoahbmcq0/Birds-for-Birds-Blessing-Kaua-i-Forest-Bird-Field-Season-Feb.-3-2025.mov?rlkey=hzzdn5ale6xx1rph9879bstbk&st=qm4lb96c&dl=0

HD video – Kaua‘i forest bird field season blessing (Feb. 3, 2025):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kk6fjoiuicoh65l658tll/Kauai-Forest-Bird-Field-Season-Blessing-Feb.-3-2025.mov?rlkey=hi12ak5alpos7mfmoughhijf7&st=pf2k0fj7&dl=0

(Shot sheet/transcription attached)

Photographs – Kaua‘i forest bird field season blessing (Feb. 3, 2025):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/j7emeof69qdkr94z9m4h0/AGmXYTP8ob9WEGBTwis7tQ4?rlkey=xuay81bfddn6wwfu488zc94e8&st=m6b1h0d7&dl=0

Learn more:

https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/wildlife/birds/

https://kauaiforestbirds.org/

 

Media Contact:

Dan Dennison

Communications Director

Hawai‘i Dept. of Land and Natural Resources

808-587-0396

Email: Dlnr.comms@hawaii.gov