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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: Have you ever wondered what it takes to bring a species back from the brink of extinction? Today, we’re diving into the front lines of one of the most challenging and inspiring conservation efforts of our time with Sophie Osborn as our guide. This episode unravels the incredible stories of the peregrine falcon, Hawaiian crow, and California condor.

[00:00:18] They’re three iconic birds with a common thread of survival against the odds. We’ll explore the daunting threats that each of these birds have faced and surprisingly how those same dangers continue to impact us all. For example, lead ammunition. It’s a well known hazard to wildlife like condors, and we’ve talked about that on the podcast previously.

[00:00:38] But did you know when lead ammunition is used, tiny fragments are left behind in game, and they can be ingested by people, leading to serious health risks.

[00:00:47] You’ll find this striking x ray image in our show notes on naturesarchive. com that really drives this point home. But this isn’t just a tale of challenges, it’s also a story of hope.

[00:00:56] Sophie shares the hard won successes and the relentless dedication of biologists such as herself who are making a real difference. Sophie discussed all of this and much more in her new book called Feather Trails.

[00:01:08] It’s a beautifully crafted narrative that blends humor and suspense along with Sophie’s personal journey alongside these remarkable species. Trust me, it’s well worth the read. And be sure to check out Sophie’s work at wordsforbirds. net and her Substack blog, which is also called Words for Birds. As always, links are in the show notes.

[00:01:29] So without any additional delay, Sophie Osborn.

[00:01:33] Good morning, Sophie. Great to see you today.

[00:01:35] Sophie Osborn: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:38] Michael Hawk: I’m excited as always for this discussion, because I got to see a little bit of a preview of what we’re going to talk about when you spoke to our Audubon Society. And of course, I also had a chance to read your book. So we’re going to be talking about three unique bird species today. Can you tell me about those bird species?

[00:01:55] Sophie Osborn: I will be talking about peregrine falcon, Hawaiian crow, and California condor. And they’re incredible birds and most people might not link them together except for the fact that I was fortunate enough to reintroduce all three of them to the wild when they were critically endangered.

[00:02:12] So that’s the commonality for me.

[00:02:14] Michael Hawk: Absolutely. That’s going to be, to me anyway, the most interesting part of our discussion is all of these birds face different challenges in their environments. And you’ve been on the forefront of getting them back into their environment and hopefully getting them on a path to a sustainable future.

[00:02:31] and they’re all so different. They all have different stories.

[00:02:34] Sophie Osborn: They really do.

[00:02:35] Michael Hawk: maybe just to set this up a little bit, I learned about you because you wrote about your personal experience with these birds in a recently released book. So can you tell me a little bit about that book? Who you wrote it for?

[00:02:49] Why you felt compelled to write it in the first place?

[00:02:52] Sophie Osborn: So the book is called Feather Trails, a Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds, and it essentially chronicles my journey into the amazing world of birds. It’s about becoming and being a wildlife biologist, and it takes readers behind the scenes and shows them what it’s like day to day to reintroduce three endangered birds. As we mentioned, the peregrine falcon, the hawaiian crow, and the california condor to the wild. And in the process, I reveal what imperiled these birds, and I end up showing that what threatened them, what harmed them, also harms us too. So the book is a mixture of personal stories and experiences, but also natural history information about birds and the threats that they face.

[00:03:36] I, my main reason for writing it is just that I wanted to help birds and this was a way I thought I could do that. I especially wanted to help the Hawaiian crow which is an incredible bird that’s received really very little attention and funding. And I’d been fortunate enough to work with them and I wanted to Bring more attention to them.

[00:03:58] Having worked with these endangered species, I felt like I had a unique story to tell. Not so many people have worked with several endangered species. One of the sad things about working with them is that they’re often very few individuals left, but the silver lining to that is that you come to know sometimes in certain situations, the individuals that are left really well, and I became very attached to the individuals I worked with, and I knew that a lot of people enjoy hearing stories about animals, especially individual animals with unique personalities, and I thought that if I could share my experiences with these unique individual birds that people might come to connect with them and care about them.

[00:04:39] And I think when people care about individuals, they very often care about a species. And then when they come to care about a species, they’re more interested in conserving it.

[00:04:49] Michael Hawk: Yeah. Well, your passion really shined through and the stories were at times very, very personal. But I, the point you just made about reflecting on the individual personalities, I think that’s always important for people because I think about how easy it is to dismiss animals is like all the same and kind of like, automatons. When in fact, they’re all different. They’re all unique. They’re all making their way through the world through their own personal kind of lens.

[00:05:20] Sophie Osborn: Yeah, they really are. I They are remarkably different. And I, I’m often told, well, scientists don’t care about individuals. We care about populations. But when you’re working with endangered species, those populations can be very small and they’re comprised of individuals. Each individual is critical.

[00:05:36] Each individual matters. And I came to discover that all of these birds were really different and they did have incredible personalities. Even surprisingly, a bird like the peregrine falcon, which is typically thought of as a hardwired bird. They’re not as intelligent. They don’t learn from their parents the way Hawaiian crows and California condors are.

[00:05:58] They’re pretty instinctive. But even with peregrine falcons, when I reintroduced them to the wild, the five peregrines we had really were all very different and had readily identifiable personalities. And so I think I highlight that when I’m describing what it was like to watch them and try to help them be successful in the wild.

[00:06:16] Michael Hawk: And if I wasn’t clear enough, one of the things I really like to think about is science communication and nature interpretation. And to me, this is just so important because it’s a way for people to connect with animals at a deeper level. So I want to back up maybe a little bit and ask you, you didn’t just wake up one day and say, I’m going to go, work on the California condors.

[00:06:39] There was a journey that you had to take. So, going way back how did you first realize that you were so interested in nature?

[00:06:46] Sophie Osborn: There was definitely a journey, and my journey was more circuitous than most, I think. I did not grow up knowing that I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. I grew up in Switzerland and Vermont, and I lived in very rural areas, and I always loved animals. We had a ton of pets growing up. But I had never heard of wildlife biology, and I thought that if you loved animals, your only option was to be a vet.

[00:07:09] And I spent a summer being a vet tech and I loved it, but I didn’t want to be in a vet’s office for my whole life. So I did international relations and French literature in a university. That was at the University of Pennsylvania, and then I moved to Washington, D. C., thinking maybe I wanted to become a diplomat, but really wishing there was something I could do with animals.

[00:07:30] And I just happened upon a catalog one day from a group called the School for Field Studies, which offers field programs all over the world. And I was looking at the catalog and they had a course that was a wildlife biology course in Kenya in Africa, and I was reading the description and I had never heard of anything like this.

[00:07:49] And I thought, this is what I want to be doing, this is amazing. But I didn’t have a biology background, so I ended up taking a summer biology course and getting a scholarship and doing this class in Africa. And It’s pretty hard not to get excited about wildlife when you spend time in Africa, and I realized this was exactly what I wanted to do.

[00:08:10] I wanted to become a wildlife biologist, so I had to go back to school to do some makeup coursework, and during my first year of taking classes, I applied for my first summer job as a wildlife biologist, which ended up being reintroducing peregrine falcons in Wyoming. And it was that summer working with peregrines and watching them learn to fly that really turned me on to the world of birds.

[00:08:35] After that, I went to work on a variety of birds, including half a dozen raptor species and a number of different songbirds, a parrot, a duck all over Western North America and Central and South America. And I eventually earned a master’s degree from the University of Montana, where my research focused on American Dippers, which is the only truly aquatic songbird in North America, an amazing little bird.

[00:08:59] So aside from peregrine falcons along the way, I worked with two other endangered species, the Hawaiian crow and the California condor. And so those, along with peregrines, as we’ve mentioned, are the stars of my new book, Feather Trails.

[00:09:12] Michael Hawk: Well, let’s jump into the peregrine falcon then. From your perspective, what makes it so astoundingly special?

[00:09:18] Sophie Osborn: I think first and foremost, one of the facts about peregrine falcons that most captivates people is that it is the fastest animal in the world in its dive or stoop as it’s known, being clocked at over 200 miles per hour. It’s a strikingly beautiful top level predator. It feeds on birds and people have been captivated by peregrines for about 4, 000 years. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone isn’t moved by seeing a peregrine for the first time.

[00:09:47] Michael Hawk: And when you think about that fact that you gave the 200 miles per hour speed and it’s stoop, and you start to think about what kind of physiology is required to do that, it’s pretty amazing. Like even, how do you see when you’re moving that fast? And how do you, like, what happens if dust is hitting your eyes and the air is drying you out so fast?

[00:10:05] And like, there’s just so many cool little things

[00:10:07] Sophie Osborn: Well, exactly. And you’ve touched on, some incredible adaptations that peregrines have in their eyes. I detail a lot of those really amazing adaptations that they have for high speed flight. They’re superbly adapted for doing that.

[00:10:22] Michael Hawk: And there’s some amazing videos online too, of them going into their stoop and, chasing like city pigeons and,

[00:10:28] you know,

[00:10:29] Sophie Osborn: I bet.

[00:10:30] Michael Hawk: So what caused the peregrine to become endangered?

[00:10:33] Sophie Osborn: Well, it was primarily the pesticide DDT, along with a few other highly toxic pesticides. The birds started declining in the 1950s, and it disappeared all over the world. There were losses reported from, almost every continent and many, many countries. And its disappearance precipitated a really big conservation effort to save the species here in North America.

[00:11:00] Peregrines consume birds, as we discussed, and over time, when they fed on birds, they fed on ones that had fed on seeds and invertebrates and vegetation that had been contaminated by DDT. So the peregrines ended up ingesting more and more DDT over time as they fed on these birds. And the breakdown product of DDT, which is known as DDE, accumulated in their bodies, and it interfered with their calcium production.

[00:11:28] And so they were unable to lay or they laid thin shelled eggs. And then when the peregrines incubated the eggs, they ended up crushing them, so they weren’t able to raise young, and the population numbers just collapsed all over the world.

[00:11:44] Michael Hawk: And this is I think what you just described that’s similar to the impact DDT had on bald eagles and a number of other species

[00:11:51] Sophie Osborn: Bald eagles brown pelicans, ospreys, a lot of birds ended up having thin shelled eggs and not being able to raise young during that period.

[00:12:02] Michael Hawk: So when you started working with the peregrines paint a picture of the landscape at that point in terms of the status of the populations and, the number of birds that you were working with?

[00:12:13] Sophie Osborn: I reintroduced them in 1991. Reintroductions had started in 1974 and had mainly occurred in the East . And so the Peregrine had started to recover its numbers . But reintroductions were just ramping up in the west when I started working with them.

[00:12:32] There was some recovery that was going on and DDT had been banned, which was the key, really, to recovering the peregrine that had been banned in 1972. So it was more just trying to repopulate areas more quickly through reintroductions.

[00:12:48] Michael Hawk: So tell me a little bit about the reintroduction process for the peregrines and maybe compare and contrast to some of the other ones you worked on. Before reading your book my uh, perspective on this was a lot of the reintroductions that were happening in the East were being done on tall buildings and cities.

[00:13:06] Like that was where biologists had access to, and I might be wrong, so you can correct me there. But, these birds in the West, what was different about these more wild Western introductions and where did these birds come from? Like what was their genetic origin?

[00:13:22] Sophie Osborn: In the East, they were also reintroduced In cliff habitats, peregrines inhabit a really wide variety of areas, usually open country, and they nest on high ledges. So I think it was fortuitous when they discovered that peregrines were willing to nest on tall buildings as well as cliffs.

[00:13:41] So they reintroduced them on both. They also built these structures in wetlands and reintroduced peregrines out of boxes that were on tall stilts in wetlands. So in the West, there were just, I think, fewer large cities. And so they focused more on natural habitat and cliffs where they were reintroducing them. The peregrine, genetics is complicated.

[00:14:03] The Eastern peregrine had completely disappeared by the time reintroduction started. So when, Peregrines were bred in captivity, they took several subspecies and combined them. And then reintroduced species that had genetics from several different subspecies to peregrines in the East .

[00:14:21] So,

[00:14:22] Michael Hawk: tell me a little bit more about the process then and what that looks like?

[00:14:26] Sophie Osborn: With peregrines, they’re a bird that learns to hunt instinctively. So, reintroducing them to the wild was a fairly straightforward process. I mean, It took a while to work out different techniques. They tried a variety of different things. But what they found worked best was a process called hacking.

[00:14:43] And so they would raise young in captivity and then they would bring the birds to the release site and place them in a really large plywood box that was set up on a cliff or on a building. And they would stay in the box for about a week until they’d finished growing up Hacksite attendants like me would drop food down through a chute to feed them during that week.

[00:15:05] And at about six weeks of age, they were ready to fly. And so we pulled off the front of the box and released them to the wild. And over time they figured out how to hunt on their own. In the meantime, we supplied them with food so that right after the release, there was plenty of food available for them until they learned to hunt on their own.

[00:15:23] We monitored them to make sure they would stay safe. We had to especially keep them safe from predators like golden eagles and great horned owls, and even adult peregrines that could target newly released peregrines. And so we basically, fed them and monitored them and looked out for them for about six weeks.

[00:15:40] And then during that time period, they learned to hunt on their own and dispersed from the release site.

[00:15:47] Michael Hawk: So you mentioned that, DDT had been banned a long time ago and a question I suppose I have with that is there still DDT in the environment at all?

[00:15:55] Like how long does it persist out there? Is there still a risk from DDT?

[00:16:00] Sophie Osborn: There is still a risk from DDT in certain places, it’s a remarkably persistent pesticide, and there were companies that produced DDT, for example, the Montrose Chemical Company in Los Angeles that dumped their toxic waste products into the Los Angeles sewage system, and it went out into the Pacific Ocean and settled, on the seafloor. Today fish that feed in that area are contaminated with DDT, and the sea lions that feed on those fish end up accumulating DDT in their systems, and they’re toxic.

[00:16:39] They then travel up the coast, and California condors have fed on those sea lions, when those animals died. And so California condors nesting in the redwoods on the coast of California now are having thin shelled eggs in certain situations. So this is 50 years later, but there’s still some effects of DDT.

[00:17:02] And there’s other stories too. There’s a certain town in Michigan where a company produced DDT, and many of the townspeople have their yard birds dying because they had fill from the company dirt that they used to form their yards, and it still had DDT in it.

[00:17:19] So robins feed on their lawns and die all these years later.

[00:17:23] Michael Hawk: Wow. The biological mystery of tracking down the causes of that must have been fascinating as well as a few things I want to read about.

[00:17:33] Sophie Osborn: It’s incredible. It’s a very convoluted story but yes, it is very persistent. Fortunately, it’s not affecting all birds everywhere, but there are still localized impacts.

[00:17:45] Michael Hawk: Yeah. I know DDT is still used in different parts of the world too, which is another story, but to help control mosquitoes and, and so forth. So very complicated. But one of the things that we’ve talked about on this podcast before is neonicotinoids. And, uh, it was interesting to see you bring it up in your book as a newer threat.

[00:18:05] And I learned a lot, from your book about how this threat was maybe even broader than I realized. So can you tell me a little bit about what are neonicotinoids and, and what threat do they pose?

[00:18:15] Sophie Osborn: Yeah, and I especially wanted to put it in the context of, here we had this incredible situation with DDT killing all kinds of birds. And so we banned this pesticide. But yet in many ways, we’re going through this, same story where we have a pesticide that’s widespread and persistent and it’s causing problems.

[00:18:34] Neonicotinoids are a family of pesticides that are absolutely deadly to insects. They’re far more toxic to insects than DDT was. I think it takes about 10, 000 times more DDT to kill half a sample of bees than it takes neonicotinoids. So they’re very deadly. Fortunately, they’re less acutely toxic to vertebrates like people and dogs.

[00:18:58] They’re known as systemic insecticides, which means that they’re absorbed by a plant’s roots and leaves. And so the entire plant becomes toxic. So insects that feed on any part of the plant, like its flowers or its fruits or leaves either die or are debilitated. And these pesticides are really widely used in agriculture.

[00:19:19] There’s hundreds of varieties of neonicotinoids, and seeds of more than 140 crops are coated before they’re planted with neonicotinoids, so that they’re not destroyed by insects, basically. But although they’re less toxic to vertebrates, even so, a single corn seed treated with imidacloprid, which is one of the most widely used and oldest neonicotinoids can kill a seed eating bird the size of a blue jay.

[00:19:47] So, they can be harmful to birds and feeding on less than that, like a tenth of a seed every day, can inhibit a bird’s ability to reproduce. So, they still are problematic for birds and maybe more so than we realize. Their widespread use has led to absolutely catastrophic declines of our insect populations.

[00:20:07] Many people are now referring to an insect apocalypse. As so many of our birds feed on insects or else they feed their young insects during the breeding season to raise their nestlings. so With so many of our insects disappearing, that’s impacting our bird populations. We’ve lost about 3 billion birds in the last 50 years, and some of those losses are attributed to neonicotinoids. The pesticides are water soluble, and so they can be transported through runoff from terrestrial to aquatic systems, and they can contaminate our surface and groundwater. And like DDT, they’re very persistent, so they’re toxic to earthworms and our soil organisms to the aquatic invertebrates that feed our fish, to the birds and bees that pollinate our plants, and of course, to the insects that sustain our birds and bats. So they’re having pretty ecosystemic effects. And even though, they’re not killing birds quite as directly as DDT harmed peregrines, because of that loss of insects, they’re having an incredible toll on wildlife generally.

[00:21:14] Michael Hawk: Yeah, I’ve been amazed. Some of the research I’ve read shows how if you plant a plant that has been treated with a neonic, how it can actually leach into a neighboring plant as well. And just the, incredible persistence of these chemicals. We even did a, in the Jumpstart Nature podcast, an episode called Plant Your Bird Feeder.

[00:21:34] And, And the idea there was to help dispel, in the casual, person who has a bird feeder, the myth that all birds eat seeds, because as you alluded to very few are just dedicated seed eaters, granivorous birds. They almost all require insects at some point in their life. And if those insects are gone, that’s the cascading effect.

[00:21:56] So just so far reaching.

[00:21:58] Sophie Osborn: So neonics might not affect peregrines directly, but, if there are far fewer insects, and so birds aren’t raising as many young, then there are fewer birds in general. And so a bird like a peregrine that depends on birds down the road may end up being harmed by them.

[00:22:15] Michael Hawk: I don’t quite know how to ask this question, so I’ll do it the best way I can. So I think of peregrines as like an apex predator So when there are cracks in the foundation of, all the species they depend on, are they more adversely harmed? that make They are absolutely apex predators. And I think we just don’t yet know how they’re going to be affected. For now, peregrine numbers have recovered compared to the DDT era. They were taken off the endangered species list in 1999. They’re not currently considered a bird of concern. Their population numbers are stable. They’re doing well. But what happens in the future with declining bird populations is anyone’s guess. I would think that they would potentially decline. One thing that peregrines have going for them is they’re very opportunistic in the number of birds they kill, and they’re incredible. They’re known to have killed maybe 2, 000 different species of birds. 20 percent of the world’s birds. And so they have that going from them. Even if certain birds decline, they can target other species. So it may be longer before peregrines are affected by neonicotinoids.

[00:23:34] That’s a good point. As a generalist Apex Predator, they have other options on

[00:23:38] Sophie Osborn: apex.

[00:23:38] Exactly.

[00:23:39] Michael Hawk: So I’m much, much less familiar with the Hawaiian crow. Maybe you can, again, just help paint a picture of, what does this bird look like? How does it behave? Maybe compared to an American crow that I think a lot of people would be familiar with.

[00:23:52] Sophie Osborn: Right. The Hawaiian crow is the most endangered corvid in the world. Corvids are ravens, crows, jays, and nutcrackers. And most people are astonished to hear that any crow anywhere is endangered because we tend to think of our American crows as very opportunistic and able to cope with people and their habitat.

[00:24:11] But Island living crows that live in forested habitats are some of our most endangered birds. The Hawaiian crow lives on the island of Hawaii, or the Big Island, and the Hawaiian island chain, and it resides in the cloud forest. It looks quite like our American crow. It’s a little duskier brown and has a bigger bill, and it’s actually more closely related to common ravens than to American crows.

[00:24:38] They are a forest species. They’re very arboreal. They feed on a wide variety of fruits, and they’re really important seed dispersers in the Hawaiian cloud forest. They also feed on insects, which they find under bark, flakes of bark, on tree trunks and branches, or in clusters of leaves. And they also probe for nectar in flower blossoms.

[00:25:00] So they’re definitely different than the crows that we’re used to experiencing.

[00:25:04] Michael Hawk: Yeah, and I have never had the privilege of seeing one and it makes sense if they’re only on the one island in the Hawaiian chain.

[00:25:11] Sophie Osborn: Just the one island. And one thing I loved about them, which I didn’t mention, is they have just this wide variety of incredible vocalizations. They have about 60 different calls that they make. And for me, the Hawaiian crow really became the voice of the cloud forest when I was there on Hawaii.

[00:25:28] They’re just, raucous and sometimes quiet and whispery and murmuring, but very vocal So the forests were always ringing with the sounds of the alala, which was amazing.

[00:25:39] Michael Hawk: That’s really neat. And, I think a lot of people maybe don’t realize how, Corvids in general have a wide range of vocalizations and capabilities and like Ravens can speak English kind of like a parrot, like they, maybe they don’t know what they’re saying, but they can at least mimic.

[00:25:53] So this one, it sounds like it’s at the top of the stack in terms

[00:25:56] Sophie Osborn: It really is.

[00:25:57] Michael Hawk: So why is it endangered? What’s going on with its populations?

[00:26:02] Sophie Osborn: So a good portion of its habitat in Hawaii was destroyed by Polynesian colonizers and European colonizers and the animals that they brought with them. And in more recent times, Their numbers were also really impacted by introduced predators and diseases on the islands.

[00:26:19] Hawaiian birds evolved on islands that had no mammals, except for bats, and so they had no mammalian predators, no reptilian predators, and their only native predator was the Hawaiian hawk or ‘io’ As it’s known in Hawaii, but people introduced rats and mongooses and cats all of which prey on Hawaiian birds that had never evolved to deal with predators.

[00:26:40] So the rats are tree dwelling, so they can get up into the trees and consume eggs and nestlings, which is obviously very problematic. And if Hawaiian crow nestlings avoided the rats and managed to fledge they typically spent their first few weeks on the ground, unable to fly. And that was a great strategy when there were no predators around, but now that there are cats and mongooses They’re acutely vulnerable to being killed. Hawaiian birds have also been decimated by introduced mosquitoes. At one time, Hawaii had no biting insects, so it was a complete avian paradise, and probably a paradise for people too. But mosquitoes were introduced to the islands in 1826, and they became disease vectors for two introduced diseases, avian malaria and avian pox.

[00:27:28] And those took an incredible toll on Hawaiian birds. Mosquito transmission of these diseases is the major reason that we now call Hawaii the extinction capital of the world. Many of the native birds end up dying after just a single mosquito bite, so they’re very vulnerable to these diseases.

[00:27:47] Michael Hawk: It sounds, pretty dire. So all these different species have been introduced, leading to the current state of as you said, Hawaii being the extinction capital I’m thinking also about New Zealand and how they’ve taken very dramatic action to rid their islands of certain predators.

[00:28:06] Is anything like that even possible in Hawaii to, like, I can’t imagine that with mosquitoes, but you know, some of the other predators that had been introduced, is there any way to reset things?

[00:28:18] Sophie Osborn: They are working really hard on it and one of the ways they’re doing that is by installing fencing, so they’ll put fences around certain protected areas, and then they will try to target and kill the animals that are within those fences, the cats and the mongooses. One of the problems is feral pigs.

[00:28:38] There’s also a lot of, introduce cattle and pigs on the landscape. And the feral pigs are especially problematic because they create wallows, they disturb and destroy the undergrowth, but they also, while they’re rooting for tubers and earthworms, they create these depressions where water collects, and then mosquitoes end up depositing their eggs in these depressions.

[00:29:03] And so getting rid of the feral pigs out of these fenced areas is a high priority, but it’s controversial because many hunters like to hunt the pigs. So that’s one problem. They can trap animals and they,, have done a great job in certain areas, improving the habitat. The mosquito situation is obviously way more complicated and it’s, it’s even more dire than I have spoken about so far because many of the native birds that are left on Hawaii now live at high elevations because that’s, they’re cooler and there are fewer mosquitoes in those areas.

[00:29:37] But in our warming climate, mosquitoes are able to occur at higher and higher elevations and there’s soon going to be no mosquito free habitat left in Hawaii for those few remaining native birds. And mitigating the mosquito threat, as you suggested, is really challenging. But there are some good tools that people are deploying, hopefully.

[00:29:59] Right now, one of the best options is a biocontrol. It’s called Wolbachia and it’s a bacteria that is a common and naturally occurring in many, many insects, and in Hawaii, it’s found in many native and non native insects, including mosquitoes. And when it’s in mosquitoes, it reduces their lifespan, it can disrupt their reproduction, and it interferes with the pathogens they carry.

[00:30:25] And so what conservationist researchers are doing, is they’re infecting male mosquitoes in the lab with a particular strain of Wolbachia. The males don’t bite people and don’t transmit diseases. It’s the females that do that. So they infect the males with a lab strain of Wolbachia, and then they’re releasing them to the wild, where those males will then mate with females.

[00:30:50] And when they mate, They effectively sterilize the females because the Wolbachia strains that the males have and that the females might have are incompatible, and when they are, it stops the eggs from developing. So with each release of Wolbachia containing males, they’re hoping that the population of mosquitoes will decline, and they started basically dropping male mosquitoes containing Wolbachia in November.

[00:31:15] of last year, and they’re dropping them into areas that are important to forest birds on Kauai and Maui, and so I don’t know the results of that yet, but they are starting to do that, and it’s sort of a last ditch desperate measure, because if we don’t control mosquitoes, we’re not going to be able to conserve Hawaii’s birds.

[00:31:34] Michael Hawk: Well, it’s going to be, in a way, fascinating to see how this plays out with the rapid reproduction cycle of mosquitoes. And, if they start to adapt to the Wolbachia uh, or not, this will be important to watch.

[00:31:47] Sophie Osborn: And there’s some other methods like, gene editing and things like that, that they can do with mosquitoes so that they don’t transmit these diseases or so that they don’t reproduce successfully. So they’ve done some of that work with mosquitoes that transmit human malaria. So there are some other potential options, but, they’re increasingly invasive And expensive and involved, so none of this is easy conservation.

[00:32:13] Michael Hawk: Now this might seem like a little bit of a leap to people, but the topic of toxoplasmosis came up in your book. So can you help connect those dots here?

[00:32:24] Sophie Osborn: I think that’s a fascinating issue. Toxoplasmosis is a cat transmitted disease. And it’s a serious concern to people in wildlife. It’s killed Several Hawaiian crows and at least 14 critically endangered monk seals. People are often surprised that it can kill aquatic animals as well as terrestrial animals.

[00:32:45] And it’s a risk to a host of other organisms, people and also organisms ranging from whales to wolves. It’s really widespread disease. The disease is , caused by a parasite. It’s called Toxoplasma gondii, and it’s a single celled parasite that reproduces in feline intestines. It’s excreted from their intestines in the form of oocysts, which are these single egg like cells excreted in cat feces.

[00:33:11] And it’s eventually ingested by an intermediate host, like a rat or a person. Aside from causing damage in that host the parasite eventually settles in the form of cysts in the host brain, and it affects the neural circuitry of the brain. And so infected rats, for example, lose their fear of cats and they actually become attracted to cat urine.

[00:33:32] So not surprisingly, they become easy prey and they restart the cycles. It’s this incredibly ingenious parasite. And the Toxoplasma oocysts are very persistent in the environment. They can remain for a really long time and because of runoff, they can contaminate terrestrial and aquatic environments, as I mentioned.

[00:33:52] Worldwide, it’s one of the most common human parasitic infections and people can Contract it by eating contaminated vegetables. Like, if, the parasite gets into a water reservoir, for example, and then that water is used to water vegetables, they can become contaminated. It also can be transmitted for people who eat undercooked meat, and by emptying cat litter boxes, if people have outdoor cats, or even by weeding a garden that’s visited by cats.

[00:34:23] Michael Hawk: I remember when my wife was pregnant, we were told that l itter box duty

[00:34:28] was now my

[00:34:29] Sophie Osborn: All yours.

[00:34:30] Michael Hawk: Even though our cats were indoors, they still wanted to be very, very cautious with that. So that, that was my first introduction to toxoplasmosis.

[00:34:37] Sophie Osborn: yeah, and it’s good to be cautious about it. Usually indoor cats are fine unless you feed them raw meat. But essentially it’s just a very good reason to keep cats inside. For a long time, scientists thought that when it was in this latent phase with cysts near the brain, it didn’t actually affect humans, like we knew it affected rats but growing body of research is showing that the disease might be associated with a variety of mental disorders, including depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, things like that.

[00:35:10] There was a study in Europe where women who had toxoplasmosis were twice as likely to commit suicide as women who didn’t have toxoplasmosis. So it’s seeming like it could be much more harmful to people than we initially realized. It also, in rats, makes them not fearful. It makes them bolder and braver.

[00:35:31] And we’re finding that it has that effect on other animals too. So a lot of animals including people that contract toxoplasmosis are more prone to having accidents and trauma.

[00:35:43] than people without toxoplasmosis. So it’s a fascinating and quite horrifying parasite.

[00:35:49] Michael Hawk: And you mentioned at the beginning that it does affect Hawaiian crows. And sorry, if you said this, there’s just so much great information there. But backing up a little bit, how does then affect the crows.

[00:36:02] Sophie Osborn: , they’re definitely trying to trap cats out of areas where they’re trying to reintroduce crows now, but there are a lot of feral cats in Hawaii. People have feral cat colonies that they take care of. And so that’s how some of the parasites getting washed into the waterways but the forests have a lot of feral cats and so they’re defecating in the forest and rodents might pick that up or the crows are somehow ingesting, some of the feces that might be dried and have seeds in them or something like that. I’m not sure how the crows end up getting it but it’s because cats are in their environment and several crows have died from it.

[00:36:40] Michael Hawk: As a little bit of an aside, do you find that the feral cats are actually directly killing the Hawaiian crows ?

[00:36:47] Sophie Osborn: I think so. Predation events in a forest can be so difficult to see. I don’t know that anyone’s actually witnessed a cat killing a crow, although there have been several dead crows that they thought were killed, probably by either a cat or a mongoose one of the people that I worked with when I was in Hawaii saw a mongoose jump out of the undergrowth and grab on to a Hawaiian crow. It managed to extricate itself and he helped with that. So I think it is happening or it was happening when the crows were out in the wild, but it’s just not something that’s very easy to document. But they’re so vulnerable and for sure the young when they leave the nest were very likely to be killed by predators.

[00:37:29] Michael Hawk: So what are the estimates right now for population size for the Hawaiian crow?

[00:37:34] Sophie Osborn: So, There apparently are about 120 crows in captivity, and the ʻalalā is currently extinct in the wild. There are no crows in the wild right now.

[00:37:45] Michael Hawk: Yeah. So that, that would help reinforce the fact that, okay. Yeah. Cats are not directly killing them at the moment.

[00:37:51] Sophie Osborn: Right, At the moment,

[00:37:52] Yeah, they’re not out there. And interestingly, part of the reason that Some of the reintroductions ultimately failed because reintroduced birds were being killed by the Hawaiian hawks or ʻios which is astonishing to many people.

[00:38:07] And, And it’s, I think it’s still somewhat baffling to biologists because there used to be a balance between the Hawaiian hawks and crows. They lived together on Hawaii for eons, but the balance has somehow been upended and the predators are really taking a heavy toll on reintroduced birds.

[00:38:25] So, the program right now is currently planning to reintroduce Hawaiian crows on Maui, which doesn’t have Hawaiian hawks. So, it’s not a native Island for the Hawaiian crow, but they’re going to try to release them there so that they can get them out there, get them to reproduce successfully in the wild.

[00:38:44] And that will be really critical step and then tackle the ʻio after that, and how they’ll handle reintroducing them in Hawaii once they’re successful on Maui. So that’s the big hope. They’ve done the environmental analyses and those reintroductions are supposed to start taking place this year. So there is a big ray of hope for the Hawaiian crow right now.

[00:39:04] Michael Hawk: Yeah, it makes sense, at least to me as a sort of a layperson, to say, okay, you’re removing one of the other pressures that the birds will face by doing that and learning a lot in the process too that will hopefully be transferable to getting them back on the island of Hawaii.

[00:39:19] Sophie Osborn: Right. Exactly.

[00:39:20] Michael Hawk: So moving on then in our trio of really cool birds let’s get to the California condor. And I just want to shout out real quick. Maybe it was six to eight months ago. I had a crossover. Podcast episode about California condors from Michelle Fulmer and the Golden State Naturalist podcast.

[00:39:38] So, if people want more condor content, go check that one out. So getting into your story with the condors tell me about how you got engaged with the condor recovery program.

[00:39:50] Sophie Osborn: It was actually by chance, I had applied for a position with the Peregrine Fund, which was a conservation group that actually oversaw the Peregrine Falcon work that I did, and the Hawaiian Crow work that I did. But I just happened to apply to them to become their South American biologist and after receiving my application, they were short staffed on their condor program.

[00:40:12] They were overseeing the condor reintroduction effort in Arizona. And so they contacted me and asked if I could help them out for a little while. I was tied up in a research job in Montana, but I took a leave of absence and went to Arizona for a month just to help out. And that was really a life transforming experience.

[00:40:30] It was incredible getting to work with and know the condors, but I essentially left after that month thinking that was it for me in condors. I ended up getting that South America job and going to Peru and working to study a forest eagle. It was called the black and chestnut eagle. It’s a cloud forest eagle.

[00:40:48] And I was supposed to be there for a year, but four months into the project, the field manager of the condor. project resigned, and so the Peregrine Fund asked me to come back to the U. S. and take over as the project field manager. So it was not what I expected when I first dipped my toes into the condor world.

[00:41:08] But it was exciting anyway.

[00:41:09] Michael Hawk: So you mentioned Arizona. So I’m assuming this is up North, like near the Grand Canyon, Vermilion cliffs, somewhere up in that area.

[00:41:17] Sophie Osborn: Exactly. Vermilion Cliffs. it’s a great set of cliffs north of Grand Canyon, and it’s turned out to be an incredible area to release condors. It’s accessible to biologists, which Grand Canyon is more difficult for biologists to get into. So when they were looking for sites in Arizona to do a reintroduction, the Vermilion Cliffs were perfect.

[00:41:37] In recovering condors, they wanted to have two different populations so that if a disease or a natural disaster struck the birds in California, there would be another population that would keep going. And so that’s why they decided to do one in Arizona since birds had been in the Grand Canyon historically.

[00:41:55] Michael Hawk: Right. I, it’s been a few months now, but I was looking at a map of what was thought to be the historical range of these birds. And it was I wouldn’t say immense, but it was quite a bit larger than what I expected. I think going all the way down to Baja and maybe up to Oregon, perhaps even Washingto