Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN edited series that promises to report on the environmental challenges the planet faces, along with solutions. Rolex’s Permanent Planet Initiative is partnering with CNN to promote awareness and education on key sustainability issues and encourage positive action.
CNN
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In June, dozens of biodegradable pods fell from the sky above the Hawaiian forest. Each delivered by the drone contained around 1,000 mosquitoes.
These were not just mosquitoes – they were biting bites and lab-raised male mosquitoes carrying common bacteria The result is eggs that do not hatch when men mate with wild women. The hope is that they will help control invasive mosquito populations in the archipelago. This destroys populations of native birds such as the rare Hawaiian honey cliffer.
The birds, the main pollinator and seed disperser and play a central role in Hawaiian culture, are located in the miserable straits. Hawaii had over 50 varieties of honey creators, but today there are only 17 remaining, most of which are at risk.
Last year, it was estimated that the “small gray bird, akikiki, has become functionally extinct in the wild, with fewer than 100 yellow-green eikkee remaining.
Although development and deforestation have had an impact, according to Dr. Chris Farmer, director of the Hawaii Programme Program for the American Bird Reserve (ABC), the “existential threat” is bird malaria spread by mosquitoes.
The insect is not native to Hawaii, but was first reported in 1826, but probably unintentionally It will be handed over to a whaling ship. “They caused a wave of extinction,” the farmer says. Many native birds, such as honey clutter, did not resist the disease.
As mosquitoes thrive in warm tropical habitats at low altitudes of Hawaiian islands, the remaining Honey Cliffers have found shelter in mountains on islands such as Maui and Kauai.
Now this is changing. “With climate change, temperatures are getting warmer and we’re watching mosquitoes climb the mountains,” he says. “We’re completely plunging the bird population there (in places like Kauai).”
“It’s a constant march where mosquitoes rise as the birds push further up until temperatures allow them and there is no habitat left for them to survive.
“If you don’t break that cycle, you’ll lose your honey cluser,” he adds.
Conservationists are looking for solutions to control mosquito populations and provide a lifeline for honey clifers. However, farmers say it is difficult to handle mosquitoes on the scale of the landscape. He explains, for example, that the use of pesticides also damages natural insect populations such as damselmo and fruit fly, which are essential to the ecosystem.
Mosquitoes are also a major threat to human health, which means that they are human malaria, dengue fever, and The Zika virus, among other things, has been researching problems for decades, coming up with a variety of solutions, including incompatible insect technology (IIT).
This involves releasing male mosquitoes with a strain of naturally occurring bacteria called urbatia. Over time, repeated releases should result in a decline in the wild population.
In 2016, ABC, along with birds rather than mosquitoes, a multi-agency partnership dedicated to protecting Hawaii’s honey cliffers, decided that IITs are most likely to succeed in Hawaii, and began investigating how to apply the same technology to mosquitoes that transmit bird malaria.
“Mosquitoes that transmit bird malaria are different from those that transmit human malaria,” the farmer explained, and began testing various strains of Wolbakia to determine that mosquitoes in southern homes found in Hawaii are the most effective.
This process took several years because of the “combination of science, community engagement and regulatory processes.” Whenever farmers say, “I want to release millions of mosquitoes in the woods,” they say it naturally. People have a lot of very legitimate questions. ”
In 2022, they began to increase production and raised millions of mosquitoes with Wolbachia strains selected by California labs. The following year they began releasing insects in the area where Honey Cliffer lives in Maui, dropping them from helicopters into biodegradable pods.
“We have a rough estimate of the number of mosquitoes in the wild, and we are about to release ten times more than these Wolbachia mosquitoes, so we can find these women and mate with them, and the eggs don’t hatch,” says Farmer.
“Now we are releasing 500,000 mosquitoes a week in Maui and 500,000 mosquitoes a week in Kauai,” he adds, using both drones and helicopters.
According to Farmer, this is the first global example of IIT being used for conservation purposes. If successful, he hopes it will encourage use elsewhere. However, he feels confident using techniques as mosquitoes have only been around for 200 years in Hawaii, and is an invasive species that does not play a major ecological role.
One of the main barriers to insect release in Hawaii is the remote mountainous region, which has made it prone to strong winds and unpredictable weather. The program had to rely primarily on helicopters for release, but these are expensive to run, there are limited numbers in the archipelago, and there are competing needs for fire, safety and tourism, Farmer says. In many cases, the mission had to be cancelled at the end due to weather, he added.
This is where the drones come in. After months of testing aviation vehicles in demanding conditions, checking their ranges, designing protective temperature controlled parcels that can safely carry mosquitoes and secure them on their bodies, they began deploying mosquitoes by drones in June.
“We’re excited to introduce you to the aerial deployment of mosquitoes,” said Adam Knox, ABC’s Mosquitoes Project Manager. “There is flexibility in timing of deployment in areas with generally highly unpredictable weather, as mosquitoes do not need to be on an aircraft.”
He adds, “It reduces costs, team flight times, emission times and noise. This means cheaper and more sustainable deployment.”
Farmer expects it will take about a year to see if the deployment results and whether the IIT technique is working. However, he hopes it will help the birds “buy time” to recover.
A recent study from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute found that if the IIT mosquito management efforts are successful, there is still time to save honey creamers like Aekkay from extinction.
Christopher Kyliagis, a postdoctoral researcher at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and lead author of the report, told CNN their modelling indicated the urgency of the situation.
IIT is “ambitious” and has never been used on this scale for conservation purposes of this species, but he believes that “if it is effective, there is hope in the species.”
If mosquito populations were controlled, honeycliffers could have time to supplement the population and have more genetic diversity, and could even develop their own resistance to avian malaria. There are already signs of events happening in one honey crecater species, “Amakihi,” on the island of Hawaii, Farmer says.
However, Kyriazis warns that “even if (protective) mutations occur at this point, they are highly unlikely as they can expand their population quickly enough to save them.”
A safer environment also gives the opportunity to reintroduce captive groups of birds like the “Akikiki.” Although it is extinct in the wild, some people are kept at bird conservation centers in Hawaii.
For farmers, it is “smashing the soul” to be at the forefront of this effort and see birds disappear. But it drives him.
“We have the ability to preserve these species,” he says. “If we don’t save these birds in the last decade, they probably won’t be here in the future. And our ability to make a difference in the world will make a difference in the future and motivate us all.”
