Endangered species successes show path

Like many people living in Hawaii, I wake up every morning to a symphony of birds.

But the sad reality is that not one of the songs I hear outside my home comes from a native Hawaiian bird.

Unfortunately, these beautiful islands we call home are overrun by hundreds of nonnative species; from relatively benign ones that may have small impacts on native species, to introduced diseases that have wiped out entire species, and ecosystem-destroying goats and pigs that have pushed dozens of unique Hawaiian species to the brink of extinction.

While Hawaii has more endangered species than any other state, the battle to save our native ecosystems, plants and animals has not been lost. The Endangered Species Act has been protecting and recovering America’s most imperiled species for more than 40 years. Thousands of dedicated state, federal, and local government employees, conservation organizations, corporations, landowners and concerned citizens have worked to protect species, restore ecosystems and improve our environment. This hard work has paid off. The Endangered Species Act has helped prevent the extinction of more than 90 percent of the species it protects.

Even in Hawaii — the endangered species capital of the United States — we’ve had some great conservation successes, including saving the nene (Hawaiian goose), ‘alala (Hawaiian crow) and our spectacular silverswords.

Some of those success stories are included in a new report (“A Wild Success,” which can be found at http://www.esasuccess.org/pdfs/WildSuccess.pdf). This report is the first-ever in-depth analysis of the year-to-year recovery rates of all 120 birds protected by the Endangered Species Act. Drawing on more than 1,800 surveys, the analysis shows that across the continental United States a remarkable 85 percent of listed birds are increasing or stabilized. In addition, listed birds on the mainland increased, on average, an amazing 624 percent since listing. In contrast, a sample of unlisted mainland birds declined by 24 percent during a similar time period. These and other success stories will be highlighted at the upcoming World Conservation Congress to be hosted by Hawaii this September.

These strong measures of the Act’s success in recovering species offer a striking rebuttal to the erroneous claim being pushed by some anti-conservation politicians that the Act does a terrible job of recovering species.

Here in Hawaii, the Act’s role has also been very important, helping 61 percent of listed Hawaiian and Pacific Island birds to show stable or increasing numbers. Sadly, though, at least nine Pacific Island birds were probably lost to extinction after they were listed. In contrast, only one mainland bird has gone extinct since being listed.

The increased challenge of endangered bird recovery in the Pacific is due to a number of factors, including lower conservation funding levels than on the mainland; the smaller and more dire population sizes of Pacific birds at the time they were protected; having more species threatened by difficult-to-manage invasive predators or diseases; and the lack of political willpower to tackle critical issues like removing pigs, goats and deer from native ecosystems and to effectively prevent the introduction of invasive species.

The challenges of saving Hawaii’s unique plants and animals are indeed immense. But, as this new report on bird recovery shows, there is reason for hope. I firmly believe we can save Hawaii’s endangered birds, if we can find ways to control alien bird diseases, insist that state and federal agencies increase the effectiveness of Hawaii’s bio-security programs to keep new invasive species out, and if we expand watershed restoration to protect our last remaining native forests.

The only question is whether we’re willing to do so.

Honolulu resident Loyal Mehrhoff is the endangered species recovery director at the Center for Biological Diversity. He previously was a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among other agencies.