Kāma'o (Myadestes myadestinus) pronounced extinct

 

M. myadestinus taxidermy specimen from the Bishop Museum, Honolulu. Retrieved via Wikimedia Commons. CC0

I usually enjoy returning to old topics with new information, but in this case I wish I wasn't. Readers will recall that I previously wrote a post on the lost solitaires of the Hawaiian islands back in 2016. At that time, the kāma'o, an endemic Hawaiian thrush, was still officially considered Critically Endangered by the IUCN. After not being spotted since at least 1989, however, the official pronouncement of its extinction was really only a formality.

I doubt that many people took note when this bird was included on the US Fish and Wildlife Service's memo on 29 September 2021, where it and 22 other organisms were proposed for de-listing from the endangered species rolls due to extinction. The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) was also on that list, and predictably it got all the headlines.

I'd like to call attention not to the ivory-billed woodpecker, but to a troubling metric seen on that memo: the fact that of those 23 species, nearly half are species endemic to Guam and Hawaii. We still understand so little about the species that we're losing in these Pacific island ecosystems, and I worry that as long as people focus their time and energy chasing woodpeckers that probably aren't there, we risk losing even more of our planet's amazing species - not just birds - that might not be as large or as charismatic, but which are every bit as important. As our planet faces a climate crisis with unforeseeable consequences, I only hope that people who are passionate about the natural world and conservation will find room in their hearts for birds like the small thrushes of the Hawaiian islands, which still need all the help we can give them.

I'd hate to end my first post in a couple of years on such a gloomy note. There's a lot more in the pipeline for this blog in the near future, including a review of the amazing Apple TV series Prehistoric Planet, which should be coming along in the next couple of days. Thank you for your patience!