Introduction
Which country has suffered the most recently recorded
bird extinctions? Madagascar? New Zealand? Indonesia? Brazil? Nope. Here’s a hint: The “winner” claims
25 extinct birds, five more than Mauritius, the runnerup, with 20 extinctions. Then there’s New Zealand (19
extinctions), followed by French Polynesia and Reunion (11 each). After that, no other country has suffered more than 10 (BirdLife International 2015). The
shameful answer, it turns out, is the U.S.
You may be shocked to learn that a single region is
driving this alarming trend: Hawaii. Of those 25 extinct birds, 21 (84%) are from Hawaii, which is enough
for this one state to have more avian extinctions than
any country on Earth (BirdLife International 2015). Of
the extinct birds in the U.S., the continental species
are well known to North American birders: Labrador
Duck, Carolina Parakeet, and Passenger Pigeon. In the
BirdLife assessment, species like the Eskimo Curlew,
Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and Bachman’s Warbler are
optimistically listed as “Critically Endangered–Possibly
Extinct” and so are not labeled as extinct. (Astute readers will wonder about the Great Auk; it bred only north
of the U.S. border and thus is not counted by BirdLife
on the U.S. list.)
The other names on this U.S.-based list, however, are
probably unknown to many birders. What do we know
about the Hawaiian Rail or the ‘Ula-‘ai-hawane? The
Black Mamo?
Although we have avidly birded the ABA Area since
childhood, each of us was unfamiliar with Hawaiian
birds until relatively recently. This seems odd contrasted against our knowledge of vagrants and rangerestricted birds from the far corners of the ABA Area.
Those species were studied and memorized with great
anticipation, long before visits to southeast Arizona,
South Texas, or Alaska. The 50th state’s birds, however,
were not even featured in the field guides we studied as
developing birders.
Much has already been written about the subject of expanding the ABA Area. But it is worth revisiting the topic in light of (1) new perspectives on the biogeography
Cameron L. Rutt • Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana • [email protected]
John C. Mittermeier • University of Oxford, Oxfordshire • [email protected]
Alex X. Wang • University of Hawaii, Hilo, Hawaii • [email protected]
32
BIRDING • AUGUST 2016
of the Hawaiian avifauna, (2) recent
updates on the conservation status of
Hawaiian birds, and (3) the undeniable
interest that many ABA members have
in the status of Hawaii vis-à-vis the ABA
Area. Here we update the reasons why
we believe Hawaii should be added to
the ABA Area and counter the arguments for excluding it.
Objection 1: Hawaiian birds are
unrelated to North American
species and therefore do not
belong in the ABA Area.
The origins of present-day Hawaiian
birds, unlike the birds of other island
groups in the Pacific, are primarily Nearctic (Fleischer et al. 2008, Pratt et al.
2009, Lerner et al. 2011, Pratt and Jeffrey 2013). Among the endemic species,
P U B L I C AT I O N S.A B A.O R G
for example, Hawaiian Hawk is related
to Swainson’s and Short-tailed hawks,
Hawaiian Goose is most closely related
to Canada Goose, Hawaiian thrushes
are allied with North American solitaires, and the “Hawaiian Stilt” is a
subspecies of the Black-necked Stilt
(Pyle and Pyle 2009). In fact, only
three extant lineages of Hawaiian land
birds have Old World ancestors: the
Hawaiian honeycreepers, which arose
from a single colonization by a relative
of modern Eurasian rosefinches (Lerner et al. 2011); the ‘elepaios, which
are monarch flycatchers (VanderWerf
2012), a family that is widespread
throughout the tropical Pacific; and
the Millerbird, the lone representative
Fig. 1. Arguably the most recognizable and charismatic of the
Hawaiian honeycreepers, the
‘I‘iwi has been detected recently in very small numbers on
both O‘ahu and Moloka‘i, where
the species may soon disappear.
Photo by © Robby Kohley.
33
TH E C A S E FO R H AWA I I'S B I R D S
of the primarily Eurasian Acrocephalus warblers (Fleischer
et al. 2007).
To put this in perspective, adding Hawaii to the ABA list
together with all of its recorded vagrants only adds two families of birds that have not already been found in the ABA
Area: the previously mentioned monarchs, along with the
Mohoidae (an endemic family with five species, all extinct).
The Hawaiian honeycreepers are, in fact, in the Fringillidae,
the same family as finches. Even the Mohoids share ancestry with familiar species like waxwings and the New World
silky-flycatchers and Palmchat (Fleischer et al. 2008). This
is considerably less than the avifaunal contributions of other biogeographic outliers already recorded within the ABA
Area. Consider the examples of the Plain Chachalaca (the
ABA Area’s only cracid), Northern Jacana (its sole representative of the Jacanidae), Elegant Trogon (representing an entire order, Trogoniformes), Rose-throated Becard (Tityridae),
American Flamingo (Phoenicopteriformes), and White-collared Seedeater (Thraupidae), in addition to Code 5 vagrants
Fig. 2. Although Hawaii is home to 35% of the bird species listed
as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the state
receives only about 4% of all funds for endangered species protection. The Palila, ranked by the International Union for Conservation
of Nature and Natural Resources as critically endangered, is one of
the U.S. species that has experienced a deteriorating conservation
status between 1988 and 2008. Photo by © Robby Kohley.
34
like sungrebes (Heliornithidae), thick-knees (Burhinidae),
pratincoles (Glareolidae), and hoopoes (Upupidae).
IN BRIEF: Hawaiian birds are not as foreign as we may
think.
Objection 2: Hawaii is too distant from the rest of the
continental U.S. and Canada to warrant inclusion.
For practical purposes, the ABA list serves as the national
bird lists for the U.S. and Canada. And a quick perusal of
available ABA listing categories shows that it is rife with
regions defined by political boundaries, from countries to
states and provinces all the way down to the county level.
These political boundaries are not contingent on distance
or biogeographic boundaries. We would not expect the
political border between Mexico and Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and California to conform to a biogeographic one.
Even the Aleutian Islands, although predominantly part of
Alaska, actually include Russia’s Commander Islands. Dividing the Aleutians into two does not make sense from a
biogeographic perspective, but it is, of course, a political
boundary. Similarly, along the southern border of the U.S.,
the political boundary excludes species that belong to the
same biogeographic region as sites in California, Arizona,
and Texas but whose ranges fall just outside the ABA Area,
such as Spot-breasted Wren, Gray Thrasher, Rusty Sparrow,
and Worthen’s Sparrow.
There are also numerous relevant examples of the inclusion of far-flung locations in national field guides from
around the world, and enumerating a few of them here is illustrative. For example, Birds of India (Grimmett et al. 1999)
covers the Andaman and Nicobar islands; A Guide to the
Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America (Howell and
Webb 1995) includes the Revillagigedo Islands and Clipperton Island; A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica (Stiles and
Skutch 1989) covers Cocos Island; and Birds of Chile (Jaramillo 2003) includes Easter Island. All of these islands are
hundreds of miles away from their nearest political mainland and are oceanic islands that were never connected to
their neighboring continents; nevertheless, they retain inclusion in their respective field guides due to political ties.
In the case of the ABA Area, reasonable confusion arises
because the area currently defined by the ABA broadly coincides with the Nearctic eco-zone—although Greenland and
large chunks of Baja California and northern Mexico are notably excluded.
Some birders have argued that Hawaii is simply too distant
and too expensive to justify inclusion in the ABA Area, but
this view suffers from a lack of consistent applicability. What
constitutes far or expensive depends entirely upon where
BIRDING • AUGUST 2016
one lives, the distances one typically travels, and one’s discretionary income. A destination that may
be reasonable for one birder may
be prohibitive for another, and
there are many regions within the
present ABA Area that might fall
into this latter category for some.
Hawaii is not an obscure destination: The state greets eight million
visitors a year, most of them from
North America. And Hawaii is
home to one million U.S. citizens.
Fig. 3. The critically endangered Maui Parrotbill is restricted to a single population occupying only about 20 mi2 (about 50 km2) of rainforest on Maui, and its population has hovered
around 500 individuals for decades. Photo by © Robby Kohley.
IN BRIEF: The ABA Area follows
political boundaries rather than
biogeographic ones, and, similar to other listing regions,
should cover all of its logical political borders, regardless of isolation.
Objection 3: There are sound historical reasons for
why Hawaii is not in the ABA Area.
Birding Editor Ted Floyd, in a six-part series on the history
of the ABA and Birding magazine, chronicles how many of
the ABA’s birding traditions have their origins in the rather
casual, grassroots spirit of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In contrast to most of our preconceived notions, the ABA
Area was set up arbitrarily and was not the result of careful
planning with scientific underpinnings. When the ABA was
hatched in 1968, founder James A. Tucker and other birders dispensed with Hawaii in favor of treating Canada as a
single “50th state” (see Floyd 2006), despite the fact that
Alaska and Hawaii had both joined the union nearly a decade earlier. This definition was swiftly challenged by Robert Pyle (1971)—head of what was then known as the ABA
Listing Rules Committee—who lobbied the ABA in his essay
“The case for including Hawaii” with arguments as compelling today as they were nearly a half century ago.
Nevertheless, current ABA bylaws state that “ ‘North
America’ shall be defined as the continental United States
(including the District of Columbia), Canada, St. Pierre and
Miquelon, and adjacent waters.” More recently, the definition of the ABA Area has come under increasingly spirited
debate: in feature articles in Birding (e.g., Retter 2009), in a
Birding interview (2012), in at least nine published letters
to the editor (2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), and on The
ABA Blog (three posts in 2012 drew nearly 200 comments).
This dialog culminated with a non-binding referendum in
which ABA President Jeffrey A. Gordon queried ABA members for feedback about whether they would favor adding
P U B L I C AT I O N S.A B A.O R G
Hawaii, Greenland, Bermuda, and The Bahamas to the ABA
Area. Of those options, only Hawaii received majority support, with 53% of respondents in favor of adding Hawaii
compared to 36% in opposition (Gordon 2012).
IN BRIEF: The ABA Area was formed rather arbitrarily,
and the inclusion of Hawaii is what the majority of the
present ABA membership wants.
The Conservation Argument for Including Hawaii
The U.S. ranks second globally in critically endangered bird
species: 19, three less than the “leader,” Brazil. Also, the U.S.
ranks among the top five countries in species “deteriorating”
in conservation status and becoming more likely to go extinct, with 26 species of birds moving closer to extinction
between 1988 and 2008 (Rodrigues et al. 2014). As with
extinctions, these trends are driven by Hawaiian birds with
small and declining populations. Indeed, 14 (74%) of the
U.S.’s critically endangered species reside solely in Hawaii,
and 12 (46%) of the U.S. bird deteriorations are Hawaiian endemics (Rodrigues et al. 2014, BirdLife International 2015).
Furthermore, more than half (37/64; 58%) of U.S. bird
endemics are Hawaiian (BirdLife International 2015). Of
these, even widespread and relatively abundant species like
the ‘I‘iwi (Fig. 1) have island populations nearing extirpation; the ‘I‘iwi’s population on O‘ahu faces “imminent extinction” (Camp et al. 2009). Previously moderate populations of the Palila (Fig. 2) have declined steeply in recent
years—estimated at a 68% decline over the past 16 years—
equivalent to a reduction from about 6,000 individuals to
about 2,000 birds (Camp et al. 2014). Although the population of the Maui Parrotbill (Fig. 3) appears relatively stable,
only about 500 individuals of this species remain in the
wild, and recent estimates suggest that this figure may be
35
TH E C A S E FO R H AWA I I'S B I R D S
declining (Camp et al. 2009, Brinck et al. 2012).
Seven other Hawaiian birds also have populations
with fewer than 1,000 individuals (Fig. 4).
On the other side of the extinction line lies the
Po‘o-uli. This species was first described to science
by a group of undergraduate students in 1974; only
30 years later in 2004, the last known individual died in captivity. Similarly, the Hawaiian Crow
went extinct in the wild in 2002. Given the current
trajectory of population decline, species such as the
Palila, and especially the ‘Akikiki and ‘Akeke‘e, may
join the list of extinct species within our lifetimes.
These North American species are under the protection of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, yet they
remain unknown to many birders because they are
neither included in the ABA Area nor depicted in
American field guides.
Although the focus of our commentary is not on
field guides, we note that the exclusion of Hawaiian species from our bird books probably affects
birders’ perceptions in a manner analogous to the
Fig. 4. Another critically endangered species is the Puaiohi, whose
exclusion of Hawaii from the ABA Area. It is a bit of
entire population is thought to fall somewhere between 300 and 500
a shock to see the beautiful illustrations of Hawai- individuals. Photo by © Robby Kohley.
ian birds in the earlier editions of Peterson’s field
guides (e.g., Peterson 1961), and then to realize that they and 6) is not a panacea for Hawaii’s birds, evidence indicates
are gone from later editions (e.g., Peterson 1990). Turner that birding and birding ecotourism can provide substantial
(2007) explores in detail birders’ “shifting baselines” as bird benefits to conservation, as shown by such efforts as Save
species disappear from our field guides. A positive devel- our Species in Cambodia and ProAves in Colombia (Glowopment in this regard is Michael Walther’s Extinct Birds of inski 2008, Buckley 2010). More to the point, heightened
Hawaii (2016); the lavish color plates by Julian P. Hume are knowledge of the extinction risk in Hawaii is likely to lead
haunting, and we hope that this book will focus attention to increased recognition and support. Greater visibility of
on the Hawaiian avifauna.
Hawaii’s birds among the ABA membership, by adding it to
In spite of recent extinctions and the high threat status the ABA Area, has the potential to encourage awareness and
for many Hawaiian species, Hawaii receives a paltry 4% of could help avert the extinction crisis in America’s 50th state.
all funds allocated to the recovery of federally listed birds
We want to briefly discuss the argument that increased
under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (Leonard 2008). avi-tourism to Hawaii might jeopardize the very small
Even though 31 Hawaiian bird taxa were listed between populations of the state’s endangered bird species. Access
1996 and 2004, they collectively received about 30% fewer to the forest habitats of these birds is well controlled, and
funds from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service than did the conservation protections and restrictions are enforced. We
Red-cockaded Woodpecker alone (Leonard 2008). One of are also heartened by birders’ increasing awareness of and
the major reasons cited for this disparity is the general pub- adherence to the ABA Code of Birding Ethics, which would
lic’s lack of awareness and familiarity with Hawaiian birds apply everywhere in Hawaii.
(Leonard 2008). In general, well-known and “charismatic”
There is reason to be optimistic for Hawaii’s birds. The
species tend to receive the most federal funding, not neces- world population of the Hawaiian Goose, for example,
sarily those species that are most threatened (Metrick and declined to less than 30 individuals in the wild by 1950,
Weitzman 1996, Restani and Marzluff 2001).
but thanks to captive breeding, reintroductions, and predGiven that Hawaiian conservation is “out of sight, out of ator-control efforts, populations of Hawaii’s state bird have
mind” for much of the mainland U.S. population, species recovered to more than 1,200 individuals (Pyle and Pyle
there are more likely to be overlooked. Although we recog- 2009). With greater conservation attention, it seems likely
nize that the addition of Hawaii to the ABA Area (see Figs. 5 that more success stories are possible.
36
BIRDING • AUGUST 2016
Conclusion
Hawaii is the most isolated archipelago in the world and is
home to one of the most renowned examples of adaptive
radiation in birds—the Hawaiian honeycreepers—as well as
an exceptional degree of endemism. Unfortunately, Hawaii
is also the “extinction capital of the world,” and the U.S.,
one of the world’s wealthiest countries, is not effectively saving these species.
Our birding repertoire is contingent largely upon those
birds covered in our own political regions and field guides,
regardless of whether we actually encounter them (think
of Red-legged Kittiwake, Mangrove Cuckoo, Lucifer Hummingbird, and Green Jay). How many birders, for instance,
have been to Arizona’s California Gulch or are at least aware
of the target birds it harbors? Our knowledge of species like
Buff-collared Nightjar and Five-striped Sparrows is linked
to their narrow occurrence in our familiar political region
P U B L I C AT I O N S.A B A.O R G
and therefore our subsequent effort to see them. And while
there are certainly other ways to assist Hawaii’s birds, further isolating Hawaii and its American birding community
only exacerbates the present problem.
We believe that the rationale is convincing for expanding the ABA Area to include the Hawaiian Islands so that
the ABA encompasses all 50 U.S. states. In short, there are
four clear reasons why Hawaii should be part of the ABA
Area: (1) Hawaii’s avifauna has a primarily North American
influence; (2) Hawaii is a U.S. state and therefore a significant component of one of the two political entities included
Fig. 5. Hawaii has more to offer than its imperiled montane endemics. The state also includes some of the most accessible seabird colonies anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. Birders in Hawaii
have a great chance to spy breeding Laysan Albatrosses such
as these. Photo by © Cameron L. Rutt.
37
TH E C A S E FO R H AWA I I'S B I R D S
in the ABA Area; (3) the ABA membership wants Hawaii
included; and (4) there is an overwhelming and globally
unique conservation argument for including Hawaii within
the ABA Area. We fully appreciate that listing is at the core
of the ABA; it is therefore imperative to preserve the original lists of those who have devoted considerable efforts to
obtain them. As others have suggested (see Meyers 2012),
we propose the creation of another list category (such as
“ABA Continental” or “ABA Classic”) to denote the region
as it is currently defined, which will serve to maintain an
even playing field for past, present, and future birders. The
time for increasing awareness of the unique and diminished
avifauna of one of America’s states is now.
Acknowledgments
We thank George Armistead, Thane Pratt, Chris Farmer,
Eric VanderWerf, Ted Floyd, Anna Hushlak, and Stephanie
Wheeler for their stimulating discussions on the subject and
their careful review of this manuscript. Stuart Butchart at
Fig. 6. Hawaii may be the easiest place to find Bristlethighed Curlews anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.
Photo by © Cameron L. Rutt.
38
BirdLife International generously provided BirdLife’s most
up-to-date data on the conservation status of the species
discussed herein.
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