WICHITA
As climate change and other threats destroy the habitats of living things, biologists are beginning to think of doing the once unthinkable: finding new homes for species outside their native ranges.
Here in Kansas — in a beige shipping container tucked between a hay barn and a cattle pasture — one of the rarest tropical birds in the world is getting a second chance to soon fly free in the wild. It’s about as far from an island forest as one can get.
For weeks, Erica Royer has been preparing these cinnamon- and cobalt-colored birds for a flight thousands of miles across the Pacific to their new island home.
To get them ready, she’s played tropical island noises — rainfall, seabird squawks, the occasional ATV — from a portable speaker while feeding and cleaning her tiny flock, each a member of a species called the sihek, or Guam kingfisher.
“We want them to get used to the sounds,” said Royer, an aviculturist with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
With only about 130 left in captivity, siheks are extinct in the wild. Soon, these nine young kingfishers reared here at the Sedgwick County Zoo will fly free in forests.
However, they are not going back to their native Guam. Instead, Royer and her team are sending them to a completely different Pacific island — one they hope gives their feathered kind a better chance at survival.
Translocating a plant or animal to a brand-new spot is a dramatic step meant to save them from disappearing from the face of the Earth for good. Allowing a species to live in nonnative habitats, the logic goes, is better than losing it altogether. With hundreds of thousands of species threatened with extinction, many may need to be moved to be saved, compelling biologists to face some of the most profound ethical questions in wildlife conservation:
Which plants and animals need to be moved to be saved? Where should they go? What risks does translocation pose to these creatures? And what risks do these newcomers pose to their new homes? What does moving a species mean for the people who once lived alongside it? And when is it time — if ever — to give up on saving a homeless species?
The practice goes by a few names, including assisted migration, assisted colonization or managed relocation. Such relocations have been suggested or carried out for deer in Florida, turtles in Australia, lizards in the Virgin Islands and rare plants in Nevada as rising temperatures, invasive pests or other threats render those creatures’ habitats uninhabitable.
“There’s lots of interesting considerations there — biologically, socially, culturally, all of these things — that one has to work through to ensure that it’s the right thing to do,” said John Ewen, a senior research fellow at the Zoological Society of London.
“But it is an idea that’s happening more and more, that will happen increasingly in the future as we keep changing the planet,” he added.
The sihek’s woes started shortly after World War II. Guam was a key battleground between U.S. and Japanese forces. After the war, residents began spotting invasive brown snakes slithering around the island’s trees, probably stowaways from military aircraft or cargo ships.
With no natural predators, the snakes proliferated, gobbling up the island’s small animals. Already, the snake has driven nine of Guam’s native forest birds to extinction.
“This is a U.S. problem. We did this,” said Scott Newland, president of the Sedgwick County Zoo who tracks the genetics of Guam kingfishers. “We didn’t mean to. But our activities in the region post-World War II is what caused this ecological disaster.”
The sihek, though, was spared when officials brought 29 into captivity in the 1980s. Since then, keepers have bred the birds in zoos until they can make a return to the wild.
People typically think keeping animals in captivity can prevent them from going extinct, said Megan Laut, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. “But it’s not the ultimate solution. When we bring species in, what we want is to be able to release them back out into the wild.”
For Guam’s Indigenous Chamorro people, the loss of an iconic bird wasn’t just an ecological one but a cultural one, too. “I feel as if all of my ancestry in the past is so in tune with this bird,” said Yolonda Topasna, a program coordinator at the Guam Department of Agriculture who is Chamorro.
Her people and siheks, she added, “are one.”
Efforts to trap and poison the tree snakes in Guam have had limited success so far. Zoos elsewhere, meanwhile, are running out of room to keep a captive flock big enough to prevent a dangerous amount of inbreeding. They aren’t the easiest birds to keep in captivity — territorial, aggressive and often poor parents, known for tossing eggs from nests or eating their own chicks.
“The global population of sihek is chronically small, too small for any metric of long-term viability,” Ewen said.
With nowhere else to go, scientists began looking for another place to put the birds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners debated a number of islands before settling on releasing nine Guam kingfishers on the Palmyra Atoll, some 3,600 miles away from Guam.
This summer, it was Royer’s job to get the birds ready for the journey. Some of the chicks came to Kansas from zoos across the country — from Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and even Disney’s Animal Kingdom, each stowed in incubators that birdkeepers either drove by car or flew by commercial airline to Wichita.
The makeshift trailer here is retrofitted with everything a hungry, growing bird could want: Whirling ACs to ward off the summer heat. Glowing bug zappers to kill potential pests. A fridge labeled “ANIMAL FOOD ONLY” full of dead lizards and mice.
Whenever Royer slips through the metal door and three layers of mosquito netting into the trailer to feed them just after sunrise, the young birds know food is on the way and begin chirping. Even when they’re young, their calls are loud. According to a Chamorro legend, the sihek was once a loud villager garbed in an orange handkerchief and a blue dress who an ancestral spirit transformed into a bird.
One July morning, Royer held a dead lizard called an anole with tweezers and wiggled it in front of the nest cavity for a 1-month-old sihek named Hinanao, the last of the bunch to fledge. In the wild, adult siheks use their long beaks to divebomb trees and make holes to lay eggs and raise chicks. Here in Kansas, Royer cut a gallon jug in half to make Hinanao’s home.
“Did you eat your anole?” Royer asked.
There is a long history of humans introducing animals — sometimes purposely, sometime by accident — to new locations with devastating results. Mongooses released in Hawaii to control rats now kill the islands’ native birds. Cane toads introduced in Australia to eat beetles are today a poisonous pest.
Officials knew they needed to be careful when choosing the sihek’s new home. They picked Palmyra Atoll because it is full of lizards and invertebrates to eat and because there are no other forest birds there for competition. The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which both manage the atoll, cleared it of invasive rats.
“Palmyra has ideal habitat. There’s abundant forest canopy that we think the birds will find suitable for them,” said Katie Franklin, island conservation strategy lead for The Nature Conservancy. “Perhaps even most importantly, it’s predator-free.”
Still, the siheks won’t be the only birds there. Plenty of seabirds come to make nests on shore on Palmyra. The makeshift trailer’s mosquito netting and other biosecurity measures are meant to prevent the transplants from bringing bird flu and other diseases to the island’s native animals.
But there is always the possibility something can go wrong. Biologists plan to closely monitor the island’s insect population to make sure the siheks don’t eat too many. In the worst-case scenario, Palmyra is small enough for scientists to recapture all of the kingfishers if needed.
Ecosystem modeling that the sihek team has done “gives us a lot of comfort that there’s really not going to be a significant impact to the food web there because there is just such an abundance and diversity of food sources for sihek, including invertebrates and geckos,” Franklin said.
As an ecological refugee, the sihek is not alone. Already, biologists in Australia have introduced the western swamp turtle south of its Indigenous range as climate change is leading to premature drying of its seasonal wetland habitat. After the St. Croix ground lizard vanished from its namesake island in the Caribbean, translocated populations persisted on nearby islands free of invasive mongooses that eat the lizards. And in Florida, some have floated the idea of moving the Key deer from the Florida Keys as rising water encroaches on its habitat.
Another bird without a home is a crow called the ‘alalā. Native to Hawaii’s Big Island, it too went extinct in the wild after the arrival of Westerners. Three attempts of releasing crows reared in captivity there failed after they were attacked by hawks.
Biologists are also planning this year to release the crows on neighboring Maui, where there are no hawks. Officials say it’s not like they’re introducing a totally new creature. They note the bones of related crows have been found on Maui’s eastern end.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages most endangered plants and animals in the country, recently recognized the need for accelerating relocations. Last year, the agency issued new rules that make such experimental introductions easier to do.
“The impacts of climate change on species habitat are forcing some wildlife to new areas to survive, while squeezing other species closer to extinction,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said when issuing the new rules.
But Republicans in western states, where reintroduced wolves are unpopular among ranchers, are leery of allowing more relocations. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) blasted the Biden administration for what he called “an egregious move beyond the authority bestowed” by Congress.
Some conservationists worry about companies using assisted migration to move species out of the way of development. For instance, a lithium and boron mining firm funded research in 2022 to see if a rare wildflower in Nevada called Tiehm’s buckwheat could be planted elsewhere, but the study found the flower was adapted to its native soil.
“It’s a real corruption of the idea,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Instead of using assisted migration as a tool to respond to a crisis, it’s basically creating a crisis and then using assisted migration to mitigate that crisis.”
For siheks, scientists insist something must be done to avoid extinction. If more space isn’t made available for more birds, the population is projected to crash due to inbreeding.
“If we say that an assisted colonization is always a bad idea because the risks are too high,” Ewen asked, “are we considering that in light of the risks” to the endangered species themselves?
“Because in many cases that could mean the alternative is extinction,” he added.
But for those on Guam, it’s still painful to see an icon of the island spreading its wings so far away. Officials with the Guam Department of Agriculture said they would have preferred a release site closer to the island and want the birds eventually flying free back home.
“Who knows, maybe they’re really resilient and will be able to survive” on Guam, said Chelsa Muña, the department’s director. She added that it’s important to build skills among Guam scientists to care for siheks and would like to see people from the island more involved in future releases, noting that no local biologists helped rear the chicks.
“That’s the next step in our intent for the project,” Muña said. “We would definitely like to see more” opportunities.
Ewen, who chaired the sihek recovery team, said the Guam Department of Agriculture was a key partner in the project, and his team brought a journalist from Guam to Palmyra to tell the story of the birds’ journey.
“Although no biologists from the Guam Department of Agriculture joined the team rearing the chicks at the biosecurity unit, this is something that we very much hope for in the future,” Ewen said, adding that the first release on Palmyra is being led by specialists who have worked with the birds in zoos for years.
During the last week of August, Royer, the birdkeeper, accompanied her flock on a charter flight from Wichita to Southern California to Honolulu and finally to Palmyra. She’s retrofitted cat carriers to house all nine birds, each with its own compartment with a PVC pipe for a perch. On the island, she put the siheks in outdoor aviaries with plans to release them in the coming days.
“It’s surreal,” she wrote by text. “Very excited to see them in a wild environment.”
Palmyra is not meant to be a permanent home for the Guam kingfishers. Researchers want to learn how the bird behaves in the wild since it has been so long since it has flown free. And they want to build a healthy kingfisher population to eventually get the birds back to Guam.
But some acknowledge that the atoll or another island beyond Guam could be its final refuge.
“The ultimate goal is to get them back on Guam, and that is still a very good goal to have,” Newland said.
“But let’s say we determine that it’s never going to happen — not from lack of trying, it’s just not possible. Isn’t it better to have siheks somewhere on this planet?”
Royer said she relishes caring for these “small, sassy, mean birds,” but she looks forward to the day when she may no longer need to. “We’re the ones that made them disappear.” Royer said. “We have a responsibility to do everything we can to try to get them back” into the wild.
This story has been updated.
About this story
This article is part of Animalia, a column exploring the strange and fascinating world of animals and the ways in which we appreciate, imperil and depend on them. Photography by Matt McClain. Design, development and graphics by Hailey Haymond. Editing by Ana Campoy, Joe Moore and Dominique Hildebrand. Copy editing by Grant Johnson.