HPR heard from one of the estimated 2,200 probationary federal workers in the Department of the Interior terminated under orders from Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
We first reported the story of Eric-Preston Hamren. He was two months shy of permanent status at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — he got the bad news on Valentine's Day. HPR met him back in December at Beginner Bird School, which he runs as a volunteer.
The weekend class has a waitlist that's now more than two years long. It takes place at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on Hawaiʻi Island. Half of the refuge's field staff got walking papers.
The wildlife refuge is hailed as a great success story where the habitat of Hawaiʻi's endangered birds has been restored, and the birds are thriving. Join HPR's Maddie Bender on a day of learning and spotting at Beginner Bird School.
Transcript
ERIC-PRESTON HAMREN: Aloha, welcome. I’m glad we finally are getting you guys in Beginner Bird School. I’ve known a lot of you have been on the waitlist for a year, some of you even longer than a year at this point — but, I think we’re going to have a great group, we’re going to have a great weekend. My name is Eric. We’re going to go around really quick and just do introductions…
MADDIE BENDER, BYLINE: Four times a year, around 20 lucky birdwatchers get to drop everything and spend a weekend at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.
Eric-Preston Hamren runs Beginner Bird School as a volunteer for the Hawaiʻi chapter of The Wildlife Society. He also worked in Hakalau for his day job. He’s the one that taught us that ʻapapane make a sound like R2-D2, the impish droid from Star Wars. [sound of ʻapapane]
HAMREN: That whole thing is all ʻapapane. [sound of ʻapapane]
BENDER: That ʻamakihi sound like they’re playing laser tag. [sound of ʻamakihi]
HAMREN: ʻAmakihi, Star Wars guns. Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew. [sound of ʻamakihi]
BENDER: Or that ʻōmaʻo, the Hawaiian thrush, can sound like little DJs. [sound of ʻōmaʻo]
HAMREN: Everyone hearing that ʻōmaʻo? Wicka-wicka, wicka-wicka-wicka. [laughter, sound of ʻōmaʻo]
BENDER: To explain why Beginner Bird School exists, you need to understand its creator. So picture Eric a decade ago. He’s moved from Utah to Hawaiʻi and bounced around a bit. He’s working as a server at the Cheesecake Factory in Waikīkī, but he wants to pivot to a career in conservation. So he applies and gets accepted to a birding program organized by the state. It’s an intensive weeklong training to teach conservation professionals how to perform bird survey point counts. When Eric gets to this program, he immediately realizes he’s the only one there not already working full-time in wildlife conservation.
Eric says he modeled Beginner Bird School on the state program to address an unmet need.
HAMREN: I created this because this is something I wish had existed when I was learning birds, and I was volunteering my time to help with bird surveys, volunteering with different organizations for forest restoration, and I knew that if I was willing to take days off to go to these really remote, wild places which were special to me, other people would be wanting to do that as well, but not knowing of these opportunities or how to access these opportunities, because a lot of times the barrier is skills training.
BENDER: While the state’s program was designed for people already in the know, Beginner Bird School helps students start developing their skills.
HAMREN: A lot of the people who come are people who have lived here their whole life and have never seen these species, or they’re K-12 schoolteachers and they're wanting to take this knowledge and these experiences back for their family, for their students. I just want people to be able to connect and have the opportunities I had in an approachable way, and what they do with it is their own. Maybe some of them follow, go from working as a server at Cheesecake Factory and then switching gears and working on conservation, but maybe they just want to be able to go outside and know what they're hearing as they go hiking.
BENDER: Catie Lehman and Kelly Kamehanaikamenaopukanela Graf are amateur birders from Oʻahu. They heard about Beginner Bird School on Instagram. I’d driven with them from the airport and in my head had nicknamed them the “Oʻahu girlies.” Think Lululemon clothing, fuzzy slippers, huge suitcases. Kelly brought her own fluffy sheets from home — and it got cold enough at night that I was a little jealous of her. Kelly works in commercial real estate and Catie is a product developer and an artist. In the car, they said they were most looking forward to seeing ‘iʻiwi – scarlet honeycreepers. That evening, I happened to come across them sitting in tall grass and looking up in wonder at a māmane tree.
BENDER: Which one of you said you’d be so excited to see an ‘iʻiwi?
CATIE LEHMAN: Me, but both of us.
BENDER: How do you feel now, that you have seen probably dozens?
LEHMAN: I cried.
BENDER: You cried?
LEHMAN: Yeah.
BENDER: Catie starts.
LEHMAN: It was like at dusk, and the sun was going down, and the whole sky was pink and purple and orange, and we were just laying in this tall grass, and we saw the first birds fly over us were ʻapapane, I think. And we were just like, ‘Oh my God,’ like we have entered heaven, like we've entered the Garden of Eden and, like, we were just completely blown away that this is what we've ascended upon. We're really lucky to be here. I feel really blessed to be here.
KELLY GRAF: When we were looking at the māmane tree, and there were just like five ‘iʻiwi playing in the tree, drinking the nectar of the flowers. I was jaw-dropped, just in awe. And that was the most impactful moment, because that was the first time I realized how abundant they were here. And I was just couldn't believe that I was sitting in real life watching this.
BENDER: Catie Defosses maintains trails for work, and hikers ask her all the time, “What birds am I hearing?” She signed up for Beginner Bird School so she could give them the answer. As we walked around the cabins in Hakalau, we tried in vain to identify this bird: [sound of ʻōmaʻo]
Spoiler alert — it was an ʻōmaʻo. Catie told me she wasn’t supposed to go to bird school until November 2025.
CATIE DEFOSSES: And I was like, oh okay perfect, that gives me time to learn. And then Eric’s like, ‘Can you make it?’ what was that, last week or the week before. So I was like, ‘I guess so, why not?’ But I mean that’s what this is for, is to learn.
BENDER: And as we walked around Hakalau, Catie pointed out just how different the forest is from what people picture when they think of Hawaiʻi. She had just been to the Hawaiʻi Nei Art Exhibition in Hilo, and she’d sent a photo of one of the paintings to her mom.
DEFOSSES: She’s like, ‘Which one did you vote for?’ Cause you get to pick one. So I voted for that one as my favorite, it’s just a palila on a māmane bush, and my mom’s like, ‘That doesn’t scream Hawaiʻi to me at all,’ and I’m like, ‘What’s funny about that though, actually, is this is like what should scream Hawaiʻi.’ I explained it to her and she’s like, ‘Man, that’s really sad that I would say something like that.’ And I’m like, but the thing is is that’s how people view it, right? People don’t know. Even on Oʻahu I heard, if you used to look up above Honolulu it used to be māmane forest there is what it was originally. So palila were widespread there, too. So it’s crazy that they’re only here now.
BENDER: Kelly shared a similar sentiment. She said the whole experience has made her rethink conservation, and her place in it.
GRAF: When we first got into birding and you learn about the history of how many honeycreepers we had in Hawaiʻi and the decline, it's really a scary process of understanding, and you think that there's no hope, and then all of a sudden, you stumble on a place like Hakalau and the ‘iʻiwi and the ʻapapane are abundant, and the just common background noise is native birds. And you think, ‘Wow, this is how it should be.’ So for me, it's added a sense of motivation to work towards a mission of just expanding places like this.
BENDER: Spending time in Hakalau around so many native birds can feel a bit detached from reality. But Eric’s gotten too used to it.
HAMREN: Some students comment on it because they notice I'm not using binoculars very much. And they're like, ‘Well, like, don't you want to look at it?’ and I'm like, ‘I saw that bird yesterday.’
BENDER: What sparks joy for him is enabling Bird School students to forge their own connections with Hakalau, and in doing so, make a commitment to giving back to the forest and the program. Take staffing. Beginner Bird School is now run almost entirely by volunteers who are alumni of the program. They prepare the cabins, cook, and wash dishes so that current students can leave their normal lives for a weekend and be full-time birders.
Eric says the most rewarding moments for him come from seeing the birds through the eyes of his students.
HAMREN: Our first class had an airline pilot, a schoolteacher, a prison case worker, and they were able to come up here and have an experience completely different from their normal life, and something that they were interested in but had no idea how to, you know, get involved, and then had the experience. And then, now I've seen them. I bump into them on the trails. I bump into them at events. And now, you know, they're really embracing this conservation mindset of protecting native species and protecting wild places that we have here and watching them grow.
BENDER: Everyone at Beginner Bird School was there to learn, including the people who came in with quite a lot of bird knowledge. Like Shawn McCurdy, who aced a birding pre-test that Eric sent all the participants. Shawn is tall, bearded and soft spoken – he gives off the vibe of a very quiet lumberjack. I’d assumed he worked some type of conservation job that required an encyclopedic knowledge of native birds, but I was wrong:
SHAWN MCCURDY: I guess my full-time job is I’m a tour guide and business owner, and I do also, I'm a boat captain as well. And so mostly do like the manta ray snorkels and Kealakekua Bay snorkels. I mean I always had a somewhat interest in birds, I always had, like birds when I was growing up, little parakeets or cockatiels. [nēnē calls] The nēnē over there.
BENDER: Shawn called in a few favors to make sure he could attend.
MCCURDY: I was actually supposed to work the boats today and tomorrow. The company I work for, we have a few other captains that are, like fill-in captains. And so I was just like, ‘You guys can work for me on Saturday and Sunday? I want to go to the bird school.’ Everyone’s like, ‘Bird school?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I'm going bird school,’ like, ‘Okay Shawn, you're going to bird school, alright,’ And I'm like, Yes, I am gonna go. Thank you for covering me.’
BENDER: Shawn told me about this wild moment he had at bird school, off on his own, when he saw a family of ʻakiapōlāʻau, a species of endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper. There are fewer than 2,000 of these birds found in the wild – and Hakalau is home to 70% of them. ʻAkiapōlāʻau are the only native birds in Hawaiʻi that look and act like a woodpecker. Shawn heard one drilling into the side of a tree.
MCCURDY: I was literally sitting in some grass, like next to some koa, and then I was just like, I thought I heard their calls, but it wasn't like the long call, like their song. It was like the call, and then I heard that dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut. Now I was like, ‘Okay, that's the wind blowing the things,’ And then I heard it again, and then I heard it again, and I was like, ‘That is not – that’s something.’ And so then I, like, looked, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they're right there.’ So I just got lucky.
BENDER: How does it make you feel, or what does it mean for you to see some of these native forest birds in their wild habitat, you know, not in captivity?
MCCURDY: I mean, I was super overjoyed. And then it wasn't until, like, later, like, literally, like, I broke down, like, because so much emotion and so much excitement. I was just like, ‘This is insane.’ And it’s just it's really awesome to see this community came together and built this forest, and now all these birds are like, flourishing in it. And so that, to me, is like, the coolest part about all this stuff is just like we did this, and now the birds are even happier. It’s this, It's crazy. It's like, how fast, if you give nature some help, like, how fast it can help itself.
BENDER: Here’s some of that history that Shawn is talking about: The Hakalau forest grew naturally over the course of millions of years. But since Western contact, introduced plants and livestock decimated the koa and ʻōhiʻa forest. Across the state, the birds were barely hanging on. Community members, nonprofits, and the Fish and Wildlife Service banded together and made their last stand at Hakalau. They pieced together land donations and acquisitions, and in 1985, created the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.
Fish and Wildlife had their work cut out for them: their new refuge was filled with nonnative plants, and cattle and feral pigs ran wild. So staff and volunteers constructed a fence around the perimeter and began efforts to eradicate invasive species within the refuge. At the same time, they planted nearly 700,000 native trees. After decades of restoration efforts, something incredible happened. The birds flourished. Now, some think they’re reaching their carrying capacity in Hakalau – the maximum population the area can sustain.
Eric says the recent history of the Hakalau forest is a unique comeback story about native biodiversity — but maybe it shouldn’t be.
HAMREN: There are some increases happening in other areas of the island, but a lot of them haven't been fenced as long as here, or have had as much restoration efforts as here. But yeah, Hakalau is such a special place where all of this forest restoration has happened from the community, and the birds responded and are using even young koa trees you find the birds in, and they just responded immediately,
BENDER: Most of birdwatching consists of walking around or lying in wait for something to happen. These slower periods are punctuated by catching sight of an elusive bird, or hearing one call out for the first time. It’s hard to describe, but those moments feel electric.
One day, we had spent all morning tracking an akiapola’au, and no one was more excited to see one than Malia Delacruz, an elementary school teacher in Puna. She said she went into education to nurture the next generation, because she’s lost faith in most adults. Malia has chunky glasses and long black hair, and that day, she was wearing a jean jacket embroidered with an ‘iʻiwi on the back.
It was around the holidays, and Malia had been writing a “12 Manu of Christmas” song to the tune of “The 12 Days of Christmas.” Seeing and hearing this extremely rare bird would be the metaphorical topper to her Christmas tree.
Moments before we were set to head back to the cabins, a volunteer caught sight of an ʻakiapōlāʻau, and we raced down the gravel, binoculars in hand. The bird’s song is like a little signature, spelling out ‘akiapōlāʻau in cursive. [sound of ‘akiapōlāʻau]
HAMREN: Right there.
MALIA DELACRUZ: Oh my God.
HAMREN: Try to keep your eyes on it. If you can see the bird through the binoculars while it makes the sound, now it’s really going to click for you.
BENDER: Everyone was trying to be as quiet as possible, but I could tell they were freaking out. I walked away with Malia and another bird school student, Kaela Cachola-Tom.
HAMREN: Waiting on that one all morning.
DELACRUZ: We know.
HAMREN: So many close calls.
BENDER: What a way to end the morning.
DELACRUZ: I was amazing, I was, like, jaw-dropped.
KAELA CACHOLA-TOM: I love how clear the binoculars can go that close.
DELACRUZ: I know. It’s like seeing a celebrity you’ve been hunting for. And Eric was so right, like I was watching it with my, but I like saw it up close with my binoculars while it was making the noise
CACHOLA-TOM: It’s like, the beak
DELACRUZ: Yeah.
CACHOLA-TOM: Pretty cool.
DELACRUZ: It was beautiful.
DELACRUZ: When we saw the ‘akiapōlāʻau after searching for it all morning. Literally, my jaw dropped, and I was so excited. I will remember that. I will remember its beak like foraging on the bark, and just it was fascinating and unique. And you can't get that doing anything else. Like everything we have nowadays is like you can play back and watch it again or something, but because it's so organic, and it just makes it more precious, I guess, and then it's a moment that's gone and cannot be recreated again. Because you could try to take out your camera and film it. You have to live in the moment. You have to be super present. And then, even if it takes hours to see one bird, it's totally worth it. You get this sense of, just, relief and but ‘Oh my gosh,’ and just enthusiasm and connection. So I appreciate that.
BENDER: As we walked away, Malia said she couldn't wait to tell her students about the akiapōlāʻau.
DELACRUZ: This Christmas song for my kids, and akiapōlāʻau is number seven, so it’s the hardest one to say, like Day 7, but I was like, ‘Guys this is such a cool bird, it’s like a woodpecker,’ and they make little hand motions, so they do the bottom beak and then kind of scoop it. So I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I just saw that,” like I can tell my kids, ‘I saw what the beak, and it was eating.’ It’s going to be so cool.
[sound of “The 12 Manu of Christmas”] Number 12 day of Christmas, Hakalau gave to me: 12 ʻalalā. 11 palila. 10 ʻakepa. 9 ʻIo. 8 ʻelepaio. 7 ʻalawī. 6 akiapōlāʻau. 5 big fat nēnē. 4 ʻamakihi. 3 'ōma'o. 2 ʻapapane. And one ʻiʻiwi bird in one ʻohia tree.
BENDER: There was one more thing I wanted to ask Eric about. As we were driving up Mana Road to the Hakalau forest, Eric gestured out the window, to our surroundings. All of it used to be home to palila, a species of finch-billed honeycreeper that feeds on māmane trees. Those trees are gone today — they’ve been replaced by thick patches of an invasive shrub called gorse. There are only 300 palila left in the wild.
BENDER: Do you ever feel sad looking at like even what Hakalau is today, but also when you leave the forest and get into the part that hasn't been restored, that didn't have that community effort?
HAMREN: I think people who work in conservation are chronic optimists, and honestly, it's because we have no choice. We're surrounded by doom, we’re the extinction capital of the world in Hawaiʻi, it's it's what feels like an insurmountable task that we're never going to accomplish, and gorse specifically if, even if we had the goal of eradicating that one invasive plant, it would be a 500-year challenge, because the seeds last so long in the ground. They seed within their first year. It's, it's an uphill battle, but, you know, you turn that corner, and then you see the fence and Hakalau on the other side, and immediately that spark of hope, ‘Oh, it can be done.’ And then you look at maps over time of all the areas that have been fenced and are having restoration, and you can see the patchwork of these protected areas starting to connect. And, you know, you realize we're just one piece of this larger puzzle. Beginner Bird School, me teaching people about birds, allows them to take it home, allows them to hopefully go volunteer for other groups, allows teachers to take it to their classrooms and teach the kids about it and hopefully spark that. And then hopefully those kids want jobs in conservation, or they want to go volunteer. Suddenly you feel connected. It's not just me at Beginner Bird School or me at my little, you know, native plant nursery down in Hilo. It's, you're part of this bigger picture, and all of us together are working towards it. But if you look down and only look at the problems you're facing, you can feel really isolated. And, you know it's, can really quickly get very dark. But if we give up, then these species go extinct, and these forests slowly disappear, and in my lifetime, that's not an option.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 3, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
