HAWAII Hanging by a Thread - protecting Hawaii's native plant and bird populations

With all but a quarter of Hawaii's native birds extinction or endangered, and its other species drying off faster than the dinosaurs, some island ecologist are risking their lives to save what's left

Lele au la, hokahoka wale iho

I fly away, leaving disappointment behind

-- HAWAIIAN SAYING

ONE APRIL MORNING, DEEP IN THE ALAKAI SWAMP ON THE Hawaiian island of Kauai, John Sincock and Jim Jacobi heard a sound that no one will ever hear again: a plaintive, flutelike oh-oh, oh-oh, drifting through the trees. Holding their breath, the two scientists crept toward a nearby 'ohi'a tree and spotted the singer: a sharp-beaked black bird with tiny white throat feathers, an ebony-and-brown belly, and delicate yellow feathers gathered like bloomers on its upper legs.

Sincock and Jacobi knew they were seeing the rarest of the rare: a Kauai o'o. In centuries past, Hawaiians sewed the bird's yellow feathers into elaborate cloaks worn by chiefs. But that custom, like most of the birds, died out long ago. Sincock, a wildlife biologist about to retire from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had located the o'o nest about 10 years before. And now, before giving up his job in the wilderness, he had returned to share a last glimpse of it with Jacobi, now a botanist with the U.S. Geological Survey

Jacobi quietly clicked on his tape recorder before the male bird disappeared. Then he made a heart-wrenching mistake: He played the tape back, not realizing the volume was cranked to maximum. Seconds later the o'o alighted on a nearby branch, drawn to the cadence it had long been pining for. It lingered for a while, then flew away

A couple of grainy photos and Jacobi's recording are all that's left of the o'o. And it is not the sole creature that exists only as a wistful memory in Hawaii. Of the 71 known bird species native to Hawaii, 26 have vanished, and another 31 are on Fish and Wildlife's endangered list. Native plants, too, are in dire straits: Nearly 120 of the 1,000 flowering species are down to fewer than 20 individual plants in the wild. Most of these organisms are victims of a brutal double whammy: habitat loss coupled with a steady onslaught of alien species that prey on the natives or vie with them for food and turf. Today Hawaii's lush gardens filled with songbirds, orchids, and coconut palms are little more than ecological Potemkin villages, assemblies of alien species that have hijacked the lowlands. Behind its beautiful facade, says Paul Alan Cox, director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, "Hawaii is the extinction capital of the country"

That is not news. Hawaii has been struggling with this problem for decades. But biologists now say that the islands can be seen as a fast-forward to what the rest of the world will eventually face. Although destruction is more gradual on the continents, the same forces plundering Hawaii are likely to deprive the planet of as many as half its life-forms within just a few thousand years. "We are living right now in a mass extinction," Cox says. That may be a conservative statement. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, predicts Earth will lose a fourth of all its species in the next 30 years. Spurred by human activity, the crisis is occurring faster and could extinguish more species than the gigantic asteroid strike that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In rain forests throughout Hawaii and the rest of the world, one of every eight species is already near extinction. To Cox, each species is an irreplaceable masterpiece: "Imagine if I told you that one out of eight paintings in the National Gallery would be destroyed next year."

Worse, this relentless attrition has long been grinding away unnoticed. "It is an impossible situation to educate people," says Clifford Smith, a botanist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "The general public just says, `So what?'" Behind the scenes in Hawaii, however, a loose confederation of scientists and private citizens is finally taking steps to save what's left of the islands' biological heritage, from rescuing the DNA of endangered plants to fencing off habitat vital to native birds. Jacobi says, "We're bound together by desperation."

`Anihinihi ke ola

Life is a precarious position

STEVE PERLMAN, A BOTANIST WITH THE NATIONAL TROPICAL Botanical Garden, is not one to idly watch a species wink out. He will literally risk his life if there's a glimmer of hope of saving a rare Hawaiian plant. Even after shattering a vertebra in his neck in a surfing accident nine years ago, Perlman doesn't hesitate to rappel down cliffs or bivouac on mountaintops in order to tend to his plant patients. Hawaii's crumbly basalt is treacherous for climbers, and helmets "only protect your head--from small rocks," Perlman says, laugh lines crinkling around gentle, light-blue eyes.

Late in July; in the Limahuli Valley of northwestern Kauai, Perlman and Dave Bender, a horticulturist at the Limahuli Gardens, confer over the fate of two ragged shrubs clinging to the side of a ravine. In this rugged valley, graced by wispy coastal waterfalls that plunge hundreds of feet into the sea, IO species are on the endangered list, including a native Hawaiian palm tree. The shrubs don't look like much: They resemble scraggly office plants ignored for months on end. But even in this valley of the living dead, the shrubs--Cyanea kuhihewa--are in the worst shape of all, the last two of their kind.