Hawaiʻi’s Nēnē Face New Dangers From Feral Cats and Traffic

Few have completed extra to assist the nēnē by means of this pivotal second than Jordan Lerma, who has turn out to be a frontrunner in making certain the birds’ survival by combining expertise and the ability of neighborhood. In his day job, the Native Hawaiian marine biologist works to guard obscure ocean animals like dwarf sperm whales. However since his daughter was born in 2021, he’s additionally turn out to be centered on nēnē, which supply a extra accessible technique to join individuals with conservation. “It makes me and my household actually comfortable to see nēnē on the parks,” he says. “It is among the few native species you possibly can see at decrease elevations.”

In 2022, Lerma based the nonprofit nene.org to assist save the birds whereas supporting the work of state and federal businesses. Biologists have banded 70 % of the nēnē inhabitants and carefully observe their whereabouts by means of surveys and sightings reported by the general public. To help in monitoring, Lerma created an app that makes use of AI to establish a fowl from a photograph of its band, so biologists can snap an image throughout a survey and immediately pull up the nēnē’s life historical past—detailing info resembling the unique banding location, most up-to-date sighting, and any previous accidents. 

On the Island of Hawaiʻi, Lerma has additionally deployed distant cameras to trace the birds.  The cameras ship pictures in actual time to nene.org’s server, which logs the band quantity and updates the fowl’s profile with the situation. The mixture of the app and the cameras present instant, intensive knowledge about inhabitants dimension and well being, informing conservation choices. “When biologists are searching for a fowl specifically, they will simply have a look at the app and [say] ‘OK, it’s been out on this golf course for the previous week,’” Lerma says. “That’s drawing on our cameras, that’s drawing on neighborhood, and I feel it’s a win-win.”

Considered one of Lerma’s first massive successes got here in 2023 when he harnessed knowledge to guard nēnē from highway strikes, which pose a serious danger throughout the breeding season as birds transfer between nest websites and meals sources.  At one restoration space, positioned close to the town of Hilo and bordered by a busy highway, nēnē have been repeatedly killed by vehicles, and native advocates tried for years to get the pace restrict diminished. To help their case, Lerma arrange 6 customized pace screens on the highway for 10 days; he discovered that out of 5,000 vehicles recorded, 81 % exceeded the pace restrict. After he shared the info with the county, they diminished the pace restrict from 35 mph to 25 mph inside two months and shortly thereafter put in raised crosswalks and traffic-calming pace tables. No nēnē have been killed on the location because the modifications have been made.

One other current and politically charged drawback for nēnē are the feral cat colonies which have boomed throughout the Hawaiian islands as individuals abandon pet cats and others look after them. On the Island of Hawaiʻi, cats collect in areas the place colony “managers”—usually non-native Hawaiian residents, which provides to the controversy—cease by each day to fill water bowls and dump giant portions of dried cat meals in aluminum pans and takeout containers. Although nēnē sometimes eat grass and vegetation, they unexpectedly developed a style for the cat meals, luring them towards these colonies and into hazard.

Only a few miles from the Mauna Lani, feeding stations at a shopping center draw dozens of cats. Nēnē have began nesting within the rocky areas subsequent to the colony—an inhospitable space stuffed with flies, dried cat feces, mongooses, and even cat stays—risking predation of each adults and goslings. Strolling by means of the adjoining car parking zone, the geese additionally danger getting hit by vehicles.  Plus, nēnē can contract toxoplasmosis, a parasitic illness, from the cats, which may be deadly and can also be correlated with elevated risk-taking habits resembling crossing roads.  

Regardless of these threats, nobody was formally monitoring the cat colonies, so Lerma created a neighborhood science platform the place anybody might submit their cat observations.  Constructing on that idea, he created FeralMap, which permits individuals to report further launched species like pigs and mongooses and publishes the sightings in a publicly accessible database. “Individuals see nēnē each day. Individuals see mongoose and cats and pigs each day,” Lerma says. “What we wished to do was to create a manner for people to simply be capable of share what they’re seeing.”  Moreover, he’s engaged on rules that might get rid of cat colonies and make cat abandonment harder. In late 2025, the County of Hawaiʻi passed a new law banning feeding feral cats on county property. 

Lerma can also be making an attempt to deal with the longstanding drawback of mongooses by means of a trapping challenge. Plantation house owners introduced the small carnivores to Hawaiʻi to kill rats in sugarcane fields, however their plan confronted an issue: Rats are nocturnal and mongooses are diurnal. The mongooses didn’t make a dent within the rat inhabitants, as a substitute changing into a devastating predator for Hawaiʻi’s many ground-nesting birds. After gosling deaths on the Mauna Lani in 2022 and the one I discovered about in 2023, Lerma and a group of volunteers started year-round mongoose trapping on the resort and close by golf course nesting websites. Along with conventional field traps, they imported fashionable traps from New Zealand, that are elevated off the bottom and depend on liquid scent attractant. The efforts led to profitable nesting seasons on the resort in 2024 and 2025—and after I returned to the Mauna Lani final yr, I used to be comfortable to see the gosling I initially fell in love with all grown up and nonetheless residing within the space.

Such success is promising, however the nēnē’s survival nonetheless hangs within the steadiness. Whereas the inhabitants has elevated general because the Fifties, progress is uneven: 61 % of the full inhabitants is on Kauaʻi, whereas nēnē on Maui and Molokaʻi have usually declined since 2019 and Oahu’s inhabitants disappeared totally. After a interval of decline, the inhabitants on the Island of Hawaiʻi seems to be rising, thanks, partly, to Lerma’s efforts. As new threats emerge, biologists should invoke new methods, as a result of the work, as Lerma notes, “by no means ends.” He’s banking on innovation, neighborhood science, and cultural stewardship to maintain Hawaiʻi’s state fowl from quietly slipping backward. “To me, it’s a species that exhibits that people are a supply of extinction but additionally there’s this underlying energy that may reverse these actions,” Lerma says. “It makes me comfortable to see that we’ve been in a position to impact some good in a brief period of time on Hawaiʻi Island.”