Hawaiian Forest Bird Recovery

Staff from the Wildlife Disease Laboratories' Clinical Pathology Laboratory at the San Diego Zoo's CRES periodically travel to CRES's Keauhau Bird Conservation Center in Hawaii to conduct health screens on captive reared Hawaiian forest birds, such as the palila, prior to their release into the wild. In addition, plasma samples from these endangered forest birds are routinely sent to the main lab at the San Diego Zoo for whole blood differential counts and blood chemistry analysis. A senior clinical laboratory technician recently discovered that a number of palila scheduled for release had intestinal nematode infections. The Anatomic Pathology Laboratory quickly joined the investigation by reviewing its data archive on Hawaiian forest birds and confirmed that this parasite had not been seen before in the captive flock. Although researchers suspect that these parasites are normally present in wild palila, they want to make sure novel parasites are not introduced from the captive to the wild population. This concern led the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory to initiate an additional study comparing parasite DNA sequences obtained from fecal samples from wild birds to those obtained from the captive birds. If the DNA sequences turn out to be the same, researchers know that the parasite is already present in the wild population and release of the captive birds poses no additional risk. However, if the parasite DNA sequences in the wild population turn out to be significantly different from those in the captive group, researchers will have to consider treating all of the captive reared birds prior to their release into the wild.

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Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program
Read Weblogs from the Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program director.