“Millions have been released.” Hawaii’s beautiful birds are dying. But scientists have a controversial plan to save them

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“Millions have been released.” Hawaii’s beautiful birds are dying. But scientists have a controversial plan to save them

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James Fair,  BBC Wildlife Magazine,  2026.

About 6-7 million years ago, common rosefinches – which are today found across a vast expanse of northern Eurasia and are even occasional winter visitors to the British Isles – island-hopped their way from the Russian Far East across the Pacific Ocean and arrived in the newly formed, volcanic land masses of Hawaii. There, a single species evolved into an extended family of 56 Hawaiian honeycreepers, many of which only barely resemble their pioneering ancestor. Take, for example, the gorgeous scarlet honeycreeper or i’iwi, with its huge downward curving bill that is perfectly adapted for extracting nectar from endemic Hawaiian flowers. At first glance, it looks nothing like a finch. It’s an amazing story, but also a tragic one, because according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, 39 of Hawaii’s honeycreepers are extinct, and 11 of the remaining 17 are threatened.

One of the biggest factors in this natural history catastrophe is avian malaria. Neither the single-celled organism that causes malaria, nor the mosquito that transmits it, are native to Hawaii, so honeycreepers and other endemic birds have almost no immunity to it. All conservationists agree that something needs to be done – and quickly – if we are to save those that remain. Step forward scientists such as Tim Harvey-Samuel, an expert in arthropod genetics at the University of Keele. Harvey-Samuel and his team are seeing whether they can “modify the mosquito population in Hawaii such that it’s no longer able to transmit avian malaria.” The idea is to insert a gene into the mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus) so that it doesn’t allow the Plasmodium protozoan that causes malaria to complete its life-cycle.