Dirty rats!

After quickly reaching its goal of raising $10,000 to help save endangered birds on Kauai, the first-of-its-kind, crowdsourced fundraiser by the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project has now doubled down on its ambitions while reaching people from as far away as Bulgaria and India.

Lisa "Cali" Crampton, project coordinator of the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project, had little success in the past raising money through grants to buy "humane" traps to kill three species of rats that prey on Kauai’s rare, colorful and endangered birds and their eggs in the Ala­kai Wilderness Preserve within Kauai’s Na Pali Kona Forest Reserve.

So on Dec. 2 the band of seven bird lovers that make up the Recovery Project began their fundraising campaign on the Indiegogo website and appealed to their friends on social media. Donations of as little as $1 started pouring in from faraway places like Austria, the United Kingdom and Canada, as well as from the mainland and Kauai.

Less than two weeks later — on Dec. 13 — those little donations added up to the group’s initial goal of $10,000 to buy 25 traps that each are capable of killing 22 black, Norway and Polynesian rats without having to be reset.

By the morning of Dec. 23, the donations added up to exactly $16,001, and the group had a new goal of $20,000 — twice the original amount — as money continued coming in from around the world.

Before its crowdsourcing effort, the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project saw a hint of what’s possible after it received 37 donated traps from the American Bird Conservancy that killed more than 100 rats in three months on Kauai beginning in March.

The Goodnature brand traps look like a piece of household plumbing and are installed in trees, where rats are drawn to a cache of peanut butter stored inside. Once in the device, the rats trip a CO2 canister that drives a piston through their skulls, dropping their carcasses to the forest floor, where their bodies attract even more rats to the traps, Crampton said.

Based on their initial success, the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project believes that more traps placed over a wider area would save even more endangered birds — and the group started spreading the word.

Hob Osterlund, who founded the Kauai Albatross Network, heard Crampton speak about the campaign at the Princeville Library in November and received a plea on Facebook to donate to the cause.

It was unlike the usual crowdsourcing solicitations Osterlund typically receives to raise money to develop some new invention or "fundraising projects that are art-related or movie-related," Osterlund said.

Osterlund believes the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project’s crowdsourcing plea was such a success because it tapped into people’s desire to save endangered species for just a few dollars.

"A lot of people want to do something; they just don’t know what to do," said Osterlund, who donated $25. "It’s only $10,000 but it makes a huge difference. And it means we can all participate in the solution. Nobody is fond of wild rats. But they still should be killed humanely."

By setting a new goal of $20,000, the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project will see an exponential increase in the number of Goodnature traps it can buy — 75 instead of the initial 25.

The group will be able to triple the number of traps with only twice the donations because many contributors declined the group’s offer of "Birds, Not Rats!" campaign T-shirts, key chains, bumper stickers and other gifts that the group planned to give to donors. Also, because the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project reached its initial goal, it will now be allowed to pay a smaller commission — 4 percent versus 9 percent — to Indiegogo.

The additional traps also mean that the Recovery Project can spread them around 100 acres of forest instead of the original plan of only 50 acres.

The rats are believed to have originally arrived with the first Polynesian settlers, and later aboard Western and European whaling and supply ships.

On Kauai they’ve contributed to the devastating effect on the Garden Isle’s eight native forest bird species.

Three species — the puaiohi, or small Kauai thrush; the akekee, or Kauai akepa; and the akikiki, or Kauai creeper — are on the federal endangered species list, according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, which supports the "Birds, Not Rats!" campaign.

In just the last five years, the populations of those three bird species have dropped as much as 90 percent, DLNR said. There are now fewer than 1,000 akekee and fewer than 500 akikiki and puaiohi.

"We have found rats in the most remote parts of the forest, where they feast on bird eggs and attack nesting female birds," said Thomas Kaia­kapu, DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife Kauai wildlife program manager, in a statement.

Rats also destroy native vegetation and compete for food with native birds by feeding on bark, fruits and flowers of native trees and shrubs, Kaia­kapu said.

The idea to crowdsource money for rat traps came from a bird-loving visitor, John Puschock of Seattle, who owns a bird-watching tour company called Zugunruhe, which means "migratory restlessness" in German, Puschock said.

"Whenever I think about how many bird species have been lost in Hawaii, it makes me a little angry," Puschock said. "There are still so many species that are in trouble of possibly going extinct. It is a critical situation."

The campaign is Puschock’s first experience with crowdsourcing donations, and he now checks the growing amount online "every 15 minutes."

"People are willing to donate if they see their donation will lead to a very concrete action," he said. "We have a critical situation that allows people to see that their money has a direct result."

Jeff Foster, a biology professor at the University of New Hampshire, has been hit up for money before, but his first donation was the $50 that he gave to the Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project this month.

Foster had studied the breeding habits of non-native birds on Maui for his doctoral dissertation and saw how rats had "a huge effect" on transplanted birds.

So Foster was happy to make his first donation to buy traps.

"It’s an uphill battle but I support the effort," he said. "I thought it was worth it."