Rare Pacific Kingfisher Is Focus of Restoration Plan

Researchers at the University of Missouri are working with residents and farmers on a remote South Pacific island to save the highly endangered Tuamoto kingfisher from extinction. Only 125 of the kingfishers — which have evolved in isolation over tens of thousands of years — remain, living on the atoll of Niau in French Polynesia. Numbers of the kingfishers — brightly colored birds that survive by hunting lizards — have declined sharply as a result of development and human-introduced predators. But after extensive studies, Missouri scientists have proposed a series of measures to help protect the remaining kingfishers, including conservation of trees from which the birds can hunt; controlled burns to reduce brush that conceal their prey; preservation of some dead trees in which the kingfishers can nest; and wrapping metal bands around trees to thwart cats and rats — both introduced to the island — from killing nesting birds. “If we lose these birds, we lose 50,000 years of uniqueness and evolution,” said Dylan Kesler, an assistant professor in fisheries and wildlife at Missouri and lead author of the studies, published in the Journal of Wildlife Management and The Auk, a publication of the American Ornithologists Union.