State wildlife officials will investigate a “birth control method” they hope can be unleashed on the mosquito population that threatens Hawaii’s endangered forest birds.

Announcing the effort at a news conference in Honolulu on Wednesday, scientists with the state and the University of Hawaii said they hope the “incompatible insect technique” can be used to reduce the population of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

With $50,000 from the state and $50,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the scientists will be investigating the technique in the laboratory over the next year and then possibly take it outside for application in the wild.

Cynthia King, an entomologist with state Department of Land and Natural Resources, said she’s confident the technique will work because the method has already been proved successful in projects on the mainland and around the world.

For now, the technique will be used only on the mosquito that harms Hawaii’s native birds, many of which are in danger of extinction from decades of habitat loss, predators and diseases like avian malaria and avian pox.

Meanwhile, state health officials have their eye on the experiment with the idea that it might eventually be deployed to combat mosquito-borne diseases that affect humans, including dengue, Zika and chikungunya, King said.

The new technique acts like a birth control method for mosquitoes and is similar to a method that has been used in Hawaii for decades to control fruit flies that are harmful to produce, she said.

Scientists are targeting the Culex quinquefasciatus, the type of mosquito that harms the native birds, using a bacterium called Wolbachia that occurs naturally in fruit flies in Hawaii.

To reproduce, most mosquitoes carry a type of Wolbachia in their system. Experiments involve giving the male mosquitoes a different strain of Wolbachia that blocks them from producing offspring. The ultimate goal is to release the males (which don’t bite) into the wild, resulting in the reduction of the mosquito population.

“The process for mosquitoes is very similar to techniques that have been used for many decades in Hawaii to control pest fruit flies for the benefit of agriculture,” King said in a news release.

The process won’t lead to the eradication of mosquitoes, she said, but can reduce the population. The benefits are that it’s done without using pesticides or harming other species. The technique will not affect the other five mosquito species present in Hawaii, officials said.

Mosquitoes arrived in Hawaii in the 19th century, hitchhiking aboard whaling ships. They are one of the reasons Hawaii’s roughly two dozen remaining native bird species are either threatened or close to extinction.

DLNR Chairwoman Suzanne Case said reducing mosquitoes is good for nature and people in Hawaii.

“Mosquitoes have only been here for about 200 years, and our native wildlife has evolved without them over millions of years. While some native species may eat small amounts of mosquitoes, there are no species that depend on them, as even bats are documented to prefer larger prey,” she said in a news release.

King said the latest effort comes in the wake of a meeting of mosquito experts on Hawaii island during last year’s IUCN World Conservation Congress. She said brainstorming during that two-day meeting led to a consensus that this particular technique is the most useful for tackling the problem here.