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HAWAII
Hawaii
'
Big
Island
Paul Banko is a wildlife
biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey on
Hawaii
’s
Big
Island
. Here he has worked for nearly two decades on the
recovery of a small yellow-crowned song bird called the
palila. The palila lives almost exclusively off of the
seeds from the mamane tree, but due to mass deforestation
the tree has been nearly wiped out. Disease, rats and
predators imported by Polynesian and European settlers,
have also caused the birds’ population to dwindle. By
the 1990’s about 3,000 birds were left and those were
confined to a 12 square mile forest on the
Big
Island
. But thanks to Banko and a captive breeding center a new
population of about 75 birds has been established. So far
15 captive bred birds have been released, with one pair
known to be mating in the wild for the first time. Source:
Smithsonian Magazine September 2005.
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