Researchers Release Hawaiian Crows Back Into the Wild

When the aviary door swung open, offering the five young birds their first taste of freedom, they took note but stayed put at first, watchful.The glossy black birds are among only about 110 ʻalalā, or Hawaiian crows, left on the planet.Their species has been extinct in the wild for two decades, and previous efforts to reintroduce them have yielded only lessons.

In November, a group of nonprofit, state and federal partners tried again, but with a twist: Instead of returning the crows to their native range, the forests of the Big Island, the team released them on Maui.There, the thinking goes, they’ll be safe from hawks, which killed a number of crows during earlier reintroduction efforts on the Big Island.If the crows can thrive on Maui, scientists and wildlife officials say, it will be a major step toward one day restoring them to their home island.“They are shouldering all of the hopes of their species,” said Alison Greggor, an ecologist who helped lead the reintroduction for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

“They are the future.”The failure of earlier releases wasn’t for lack of effort.In the late 2010s, trying to instill a fear of hawks in the captive-raised birds, keepers played hawk sounds and moved a taxidermied hawk over the aviary while playing crow alarm calls.

They placed a live hawk outside the enclosure with a dead crow skin under its feet.Of 30 ʻalalā released between 2016 and 2019, many survived for more than a year.But over time they dwindled, and in 2020 the last five survivors were brought back into human care.

Hawks are believed to have killed about seven, so they weren’t the only danger.But they were a factor that could be controlled by shifting to Maui.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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