Short Wave - The Comeback Bird: Meet the Ko'Ko'

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

For nearly forty years, the Guam Rail bird (locally known as the ko'ko') has been extinct in the wild — decimated by the invasive brown tree snake. But now, after a decades-long recovery effort, the ko'ko' has been successfully re-introduced. It is the second bird in history to recover from extinction in the wild. Wildlife biologist Suzanne Medina tells us the story of how the Guam Department of Agriculture brought the ko'ko' back, with a little matchmaking and a lot of patience.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody. I have Shortwave reporter Emily Kwong in the studio with me. Hey, Maddie. Hey, you. So today we are turning a spotlight on Guam, which is a U.S. island territory in the Pacific Ocean. That's right.

Guam is an eight-hour plane ride from Hawaii, but a quick phone call for us to reach Suzanne Medina. She's a wildlife biologist with the Guam Department of Agriculture. We spoke with her at 5.15 in the morning, her time. I naturally get up early. I enjoy the quiet in the morning. And Guam is just a little too quiet because there are no birds that are waking up with us. Why is it so quiet? I feel like it's a tropical island, so it should be bustling with some bird songs. You would think. But sometime in the mid-20th century, Guam's biodiversity began to take a nosedive

because of one slithering stowaway. Uh-oh. Yeah. In the late 19th century, Guam's biodiversity began to take a nosedive because of one slithering stowaway. 40s, the island was being rebuilt. This was after World War II. And some military cargo ships arrived with brown tree snakes on board. These snakes are venomous, prolific tree climbers, and most significantly, they have no natural predators on Guam. So they're eating all kinds of stuff, but nobody's really eating them. Essentially. Yeah. The brown tree snakes invaded the island, gobbling up eggs and birds at a rate that was really shocking. It profoundly altered the ecosystem in Guam, and the forests grew more and more silent with every passing year.

Because of this one snake. Yeah. And biologists, they felt totally helpless because they didn't have money to bring these preyed-upon bird populations into captivity. And no one in the scientific community, including Fish and Wildlife Service, believed that a snake or one invasive predator could decimate an entire bird population. It had never been documented before. So that's why it wasn't until the late 19, 80s that we were able to start to receive funding on recovering our birds. And by that point, multiple forest-dwelling bird species had disappeared. Some of them only found on Guam, they became totally extinct in the wild. Meaning they aren't in nature anymore, but there are a few of them in captivity.

Yes. And there were two species headed in that direction. The Micronesian Kingfisher, which is called the Sea Hake in Chamorro, the indigenous language of Guam, and the Guam Rail, which is called the Coco. military personnel assisted in creating these human chains to scoop up the remaining birds, including 21 cocoa. And from this founder population of captive birds, almost 40 years since the cocoa vanished from the wild in Guam, there are now more cocoa in the wild than in captivity. The cocoa is back. Back again. No.

Coco's back. All right. Tell a friend. Maddie. Today on the show, we talk about the- the cocoa, the second bird in history that we know of to come back from extinction in the wild. How biologists did it with a little matchmaking and a lot of patience. All right, Emily Kwong, you've brought us the recovery story of the Guam Rail, the second bird in history to be brought back from extinction in the wild.

What do they look like? Okay, so Guam rails, which are called Coco and Guam, are about a foot tall, brown with a gray stripe above their eyes, and they don't fly. So when Cocoes were thriving in Guam, ranchers scattering chicken feed would often see them creep in out of the forest. There's wonderful stories of families leaving their doors open to their houses, which is what we do. And you would find a family of cocoa in your house just kind of like hanging out in there and maybe foraging in the kitchen or whatever. You just kind of have to push them out the door. They eat slugs, snails, seeds, flowers. They're just out there getting food where they can get it.

Aren't we all? Right. And they have what's called a territory. call and it's a very long one minute. And it just goes on and on. Suzanne Medina loves these birds. She came to Guam in 1997. And by that time, the forests had grown pretty quiet.

The trees had thinned and native birds weren't around to disperse their seeds. And you mean like disperse them with their poop? That's right. Poop doesn't get enough credit. It's important. No, it's true. And in the absence of these native birds, The spiders they preyed upon totally surged.

Suzanne actually carries a stick as she walks around the forest to knock off spiderwebs. So the forests are just all out of whack. So clearly, the situation is pretty bad. How did Suzanne and her colleagues bring back the cocoa? Well, one of their first allies in this effort were zoos on the American mainland. So in the late 1980s, a zoologist at the Guam Department of Agriculture named Bob Beck championed a major recovery effort. This founding group of 21 cocos that were captured were split up. Some were sent to zoos, including the Smithsonian Zoo here in D.C.

That was Guam's insurance population. Like a bird savings account. Sure. The other birds were kept in Guam to be the production population, so to be bred in captivity and eventually released. But there was a big problem. What was that? Well, the offspring, the first generation born in captivity, did not want to make babies.

There's a lot of aggression issues with them. Some prospective mates would actually fight each other instead. I mean, captivity is pretty stressful. It's definitely not a mood setter. And these biologists did not know what to do. It's not like there's an instruction manual for raising cocoa's. The birds went extinct in the wild so quickly that there was nothing known on their natural history. So a lot of what was done in the early years was just trial and error.

But they had a breakthrough when they realized they could create individual profiles of the bird's personalities. Birdtender. Yes, they played a kind of matchmaker. The staff memorized these birds, which were the tough ones, which were the timid ones, and coupled them accordingly while also maximizing genetic diversity. So the population would be resilient in the wild? Yes, they'd rotate pairs, they'd rotate cages until sparks flew. So take Coco number 1-1-1.

He was a tough male. And some of the females would approach him and he just didn't want to have anything to do with them. Until they paired him up with a tough female. for some reason he approached her and for us it was a very momental moment for us. Do you feel like a scientist in those moments or more like a matchmaker? Where it's kind of like the chemistry of you can't even predict these pairings, really. You're just kind of testing it out. Well, it's interesting you say that because science doesn't always agree with giving personalities to animals.

But Suzanne says it's worked for them, getting to know the birds' personality. She estimates the program has now hatched over 2,000 cocos between the breeding facility and the zoos. So how do they figure out how to release them into the wild once, you know, they've got some birds? Well, that took decades of trial and error, too. The first releases were not on Guam, where the snakes are. They were on a neighboring island free of snakes. Probably smart. Yeah, called Rhoda.

It didn't go well. The birds would spread out and not be able to find each other. There was issues with birds getting run over by vehicles. and also we had cat predation. The cats were going after these newly released, having been through already so much in their lives, Coco? Yes, yes. These cocos can't catch a break, nor the biologists.

They tested so many different release sites, Maddie. The turning point came again through paying closer attention to the bird's behavior. So in the late 2000s, they noticed the cocoa were thriving in this one release site, a pineapple ranch. These birds are telling us something again here. that this is where they like. And so we went back up to that pineapple ranch and focused on our releases up there. And it worked.

Rhoda is now home to 200 cocoa. And they're seeing more unbanded birds, birds born in the wild, running across the street or their footprints in the sand. My coworker just had, we were doing the survey last year, and she had a pair just come out in the middle of the road and copulate in front of her, unbanded birds, chicks, juveniles, they're doing it on their own.

So it's wonderful. Rhoda is bumping. Yes. In the next year or so, Suzanne wants to release cocoa finally on Guam. But that would, of course, take continued reductions to the snake population and support from the U.S. government to authorize a cocoa release on military land. I mean, can the cocoa survive on Guam with those brown tree snakes around still? That is the question. So if this snake population is controlled, Suzanne says they can.

Part of what tells her this is science. There was an experimental area on Guam where snakes were eradicated and the cocoa did pretty well there. The other part, the part that's kept her in the battle, all these years, is optimism. Generations of biologists, many now local Guamanians who are trained in this work are committed to this project. And the forests are still pretty quiet, but Suzanne hopes the sound of the cocoa will be heard again in Guam. one day, like this cocoa. All right, that was Pugito. Sorry. That's Pugito.

Apparently, our entire interview, Suzanne had a 15-year-old cocoa at her feet. Yes, that was him. He's at my feet. Yeah, he's just kind of looking around and decided that I should probably give him breakfast. What do you think other groups can learn from the story of the Guam rail from the cocoa? Like, if you were to make a recipe for how to bring back an endangered species, what would be in it? I think all of us that are working with endangered species, we know that any recipe that's needed is time, which is unfortunate. Recovery takes a long time, and I think that's the big takeaway here, is that you can't expect results overnight. Look how long it took for us to leave our extinct in the wild status and become critically endangered. Time is needed.

Well, Emily Kwong, thank you for. taking the time to bring us this story. My pleasure. This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez and edited by Viet Le. The facts were checked by Burley McCoy. Shout out, as always, to that lady. Tune in tomorrow for more shortwave from NPR.