The sterile male technology to protect native forest birds — also known as the incompatible insect technique — will not be available in Kauaʻi until winter 2025. The Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project took matters into its own hands and found another mosquito control method to protect Kauaʻiʻs birds from avian malaria.
The method they are using is a biolarvicide. The group is spreading that bacterial solution over mosquito hotspots by helicopter. The bacteria only kills mosquito larve and has no impacts on higher level invertebrates like damselflies or dragonflies, or any other vertebrates like birds, pigs, dogs or humans.
"So we are using that to treat known high-density mosquito areas here in Kauaʻi, and we just got that project off the ground because we do not expect to have the incompatible insect technique here on Kauai until winter of 2025," Cali Crampton, program manager of the Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project said. "Meanwhile, we have this crisis of extinction, going on before our very eyes here."
Due to the increased mosquito population, the Kauaʻi bird population is "pretty grim."
The Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project has various community engagement programs to showcase the importance of protecting Hawaiʻi's forest birds. Some of those include going to schools, giving library talks and an origami project with classrooms that the group hopes to turn into an art exhibit.
"I think that we as a society are beginning to recognize the threat of climate change and the importance of all these and that we cannot afford to lose our biodiversity here in Hawaiʻi or anywhere in the nation, and we have to take drastic measures to help these birds," Crampton said.
To learn more about the project, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on June 24, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
