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A year after successfully re-introducing the Hawaiian crow into the wild on Hawaii island, conservation officials are preparing to release their first group of alala in 2018, adding to the small population of birds that survived predatory hawks, avian disease, Hurricane Lane and other torrential rainstorms. Read more

A year after successfully re-introducing the Hawaiian crow into the wild on Hawaii island, conservation officials are preparing to release their first group of alala in 2018, adding to the small population of birds that survived predatory hawks, avian disease, Hurricane Lane and other torrential rainstorms.

Five juvenile alala are being readied for release next week in a special aviary set up high in the Puu Makaala Natural Area Reserve on the slopes of Mauna Loa.

The group and another five-bird cohort scheduled to be set free in the coming weeks will join the 11 birds released into the wilderness a year ago.

Officials aren’t saying exactly when the captive-bred crows will be released. That will depend on the weather and several other factors.

“We will wait until the right time for the birds,” said Jackie Gaudioso-Levita, coordinator of the ‘Alala Project, a partnership of the state, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and San Diego Zoo Global.

The project is the evolution of the state’s 40-year effort to save the once-abundant alala, the highly intelligent crow considered to be important to a healthy forest. Early attempts to re-establish the crow sputtered, and the species became extinct in the wild in 2002.

Today, 125 or so alala live at the Keauhou and Maui bird conservation centers managed by San Diego Zoo Global’s Hawai‘i Endangered Bird Conservation Program, and project officials say they are planning to release 10 to 12 birds a year into the Big Island forest over the next five years.

Alison Greggor, a post-doctoral research associate at San Diego Zoo Global, said the birds scheduled to be released next week passed all of their veterinary checks and pre-release training, and now it’s just a matter of becoming accustomed to the environment outside their aviary.

Among the keys to preparing the birds for the outside world was the predator-aversion training developed after the project’s aborted initial release in 2016, when two of five alala were attacked and killed by io, the Hawaiian hawk.

Having been raised in captivity, these birds had never encountered predators or had the chance to learn from their parents or their peers about what dangers to look out for, the scientists said.

The training is a 25-minute production featuring a live Hawaiian hawk from the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo, a stuffed io loaned from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and a stuffed American crow from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

The skit also features prerecorded io calls, as well as alala alarm and distress calls intended to convey danger and the need to call out for help.

“We want to make sure that when we open those doors, they know who the io are and that the io is a threat,” Greggor said.

It appears the team is doing something right. The 2017 birds, each outfitted with a tiny radio and GPS transmitter for daily monitoring, survived an entire year without falling victim to the hawks.

Greggor said she and another scientist even witnessed separate incidents in the forest in which the crows ended up ganging up to chase away the hawks. The mobbing behavior, she said, is common among other ravens and crows.

“I was certainly excited to see that, because it’s not easily trainable,” she said.

Over the last year, the wild alala not only fought off io but survived and resisted powerful winter storms, the impacts of tropical cyclones and even toxic gases from the Kilauea eruption.

But the scientists said it’s too early to celebrate.

While Gaudioso-Levita said she is encouraged and happy by the success of the last year, the real milestone is decades into the future when the offspring of these birds are successfully breeding in the wild.

Greggor said she remains only “cautiously optimistic” about the future of the species. She noted that the reintroduction of the Hawaiian goose, or nene, started in the 1950s.

“Only now are we feeling comfortable that the (nene) population is self-sustaining and well on the road to recovery,” she said.

For now the alala are “very much vulnerable,” Greggor said.

“They’re pretty hardy,” Gaudioso-Levita said. “It doesn’t mean letting up monitoring the birds.”