While the retirement of a network
news anchor drew major media attention, the plight of the nearly extinct
po'ouli bird went nearly unnoticed
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
Updated: 3:59 p.m. ET Dec. 6, 2004
Dec. 6 - They're going extinct faster than we realize.
There once were three, but we lost one last week and now there are two. Network
anchors? No, the po'ouli bird.
advertisement
With all the media frenzy that
accompanied Tom Brokaw's final broadcast as an NBC TV anchorman last week, you
may not have heard about the death of one of the last three remaining po'ouli—a
nearly extinct bird species found in Hawaii.
I didn't even bother covering the Brokaw valedictory. I
mean, what did he do for his whole career but sit there and look pretty while
reading a script written by a team of unknown reporters? But the minute I heard
about the death of the po'ouli, I headed straight for the airport to catch the
next flight to Maui.
Of course, expense budgets being what they are, I didn't
make it further than the end of the 3 train at New Lots Avenue (where I would've
had to catch a city bus to the airport anyway, because New York doesn't have a
direct train from the airport to downtown). Unable to reach Hawaii, I did the
next best thing: I made some calls. Unlike Brokaw, I was doing some good
old-fashioned reporting. Here's what I found out.
The po'ouli may actually be extinct now. Imagine that:
when that po'ouli died at the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii,
on Friday, the species may have gone with him. This could be the only species in
history whose extinction could be dated to the second (we're usually too busy
despoiling the planet to notice). This particular po'ouli (let's call him Fredo)
was believed to be one of only three such birds left in the world. The key word
there is "believed." My sources tell me (actually, they're telling pretty much
anyone who calls) that neither of the other two remaining birds has been seen
for more than a year.
"It's possible that those two have died,
too," said Eric VanderWerf of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which
struggles mightily to combat the efforts of its sister organization, the United
States Pollution and Waste Service.
Even if the other two are
alive, don't get your hopes up. Here's today's science quiz: How do you tell the
sex of a po'ouli bird? Wait until he dies so you can do an autopsy. See, for all
we know, the two birds that are still out there are both male or both female—and
say what you will about gay marriage, but that species is a goner. We might have
an Adam and Eve out there, but we might also have an Adam and Steve. Or a Madam
and Eve.
"We thought [Fredo] was a female, but he turned out to
be male," said Alan Lieberman, the avian conservation coordinator in Hawaii for
the San Diego Zoo (nice work if you can get it). "We believe that the remaining
two are a male and a female, but we could be wrong."
•
Kuntzman: Can Hollywood Revive Caffeine? After
Brazil announces plans to make a film promoting coffee's health
benefits, our columnist offers some ideas about how Hollywood's top
directors could make the movie
With that in mind, the bird people in Hawaii are going
ape to find these last two po'ouli. As a reporter, I've been on hundreds of
stake outs, where your assignment is to basically stand in front of someone's
house—usually the mother of some murder victim—and just wait until he or she
comes home so you can ask a question that he or she invariably won't answer, but
your editor makes you stay there anyway until the reporter from the rival paper
leaves (which is usually never, since his editor is telling him
the same thing that your editor is telling you). But even a stake-out
veteran like me would have trouble finding these two black-and-gray birds.
"There are no doughnuts on this stakeout," Lieberman said. "The
forest is practically vertical. It's on the side of a volcano. It's high, it's
wet, it's muddy, cold, drippy, foggy. It's miserable work. We have a lot of
turnover."
What's more, the po'ouli don't exactly stand up and
cheer. "These birds are small and secretive. And they don't vocalize. They are
cryptic and difficult to locate." More like Rather than Brokaw, I'd say.
Even if we look on the bright side and say that the two last
po'ouli are a male and a female, the species could still be in trouble.
Apparently, po'ouli are not like human beings in this respect. If I was the last
man on the planet, and I heard that the last woman on the planet was living in
Papau New Guinea, you can be damn sure I'd be studying boat construction.
Not so with the po'ouli.
"The truth is, they may never mate,"
VanderWerf said. "It's not in their behavior to go out and search for a mate."
The po'ouli are so bad at small talk, in fact, that the bird experts in Hawaii
once brought what they believed to be the last remaining female to the male's
home range. It was a pretty romantic gesture, but...nothing! There was about as
much copulation going on as in a frat house during the Super Bowl.
Not
even the people who have devoted their lives to saving this tiny bird think they
have a shot in hell. Let's face it, at best there are two po'ouli out
there; at worst, they've both been dead so long there's not even a body left to
examine. After all, Fredo died of malaria, old age, several other chronic
illnesses and he was even missing an eye. Life is not a day at the beach for the
po'ouli (even in Hawaii). And this leaves po'ouli lovers angry, perplexed and
lonely (sort of like Brokaw fans).
"As a biologist and citizen of
the planet, I feel that the extinction of the po'ouli is a big deal," Lieberman
said. "We failed the po'ouli. It's one more ring of the bell, yet we haven't
woken up. But this doesn't discourage me, it motivates me."
VanderWerf, however, sounded discouraged enough for two. "The majority of
Americans don't even know that this species quite possibly went extinct," he
said. "It would be nice for there to be some interest in these species before
they [do] become extinct."
Probably they're not as important as
TV anchormen.
Gersh Kuntzman is also a reporter for The New York
Post. Check out his rudimentary website at http://www.gersh.tv
PRINT THIS
ARTICLE
