By Rod Thompson, Star-Bulletin
Rangers at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park are worried
about the decline of the petrel population as a result of
attacks by cats. Darcey Hu, a park biologist, shows the
remains of a partially eaten adult petrel.

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Petrels in Volcanoes
park dying out,
biologist says

Once reserved as a
delicacy for chiefs, the sea birds are
threatened at nest sites

By Rod Thompson
Star-Bulletin

MAUNA LOA ROAD, Hawaii -- Sticking her arm up to her shoulder into a small hole in the rocks, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park biologist Darcey Hu pulled out a single egg of a dark rumped petrel. It was broken and abandoned.

Park ranger Mardie Lane showed the stiff, lifeless body of an adult petrel found in the area at the 9,000-foot elevation of Mauna Loa. A cat had attacked and partially eaten it.

The dark rumped petrel, a sea bird that comes to land only to breed, once nested in the Hawaiian Islands from the coast to the mountains in the millions.

At the current rate of low reproduction and killings by cats, petrels will be extinct in the national park in 47 years, Hu said.

In a news briefing in a desolate lava field yesterday, Hu said cats are expanding their range, moving up to high slopes of the mountain. Extinction could come sooner.

Lane added, "This is not kitties sitting in your rocker by the fire. This is a hunting, killing machine."

It doesn't take many cats to threaten the ground-nesting birds.

Hu said a single cat was trapped in the area one breeding season and that ended all petrel deaths there for the rest of the season.

People don't drive to the uplands of Mauna Loa to abandon cats. But cats abandoned in lower areas have kittens, and territorial competition forces them and their offspring into ever more remote areas, Lane said.

And petrels have no defenses.

Nene geese are also ground nesters, known for their relative defenselessness, but they are much larger than cats and can attack a smaller intruder, Lane said.

Petrels are about the same size as cats and considerably weaker.

Archaeological studies show petrels were extremely common before the coming of Polynesians.

Known to Hawaiians as 'ua'u, the birds, a delicacy reserved for chiefs, were wiped out in the lowlands but remained numerous in the mountains until Europeans arrived.

Biologists began studying the Mauna Loa population in 1990. They found three nesting areas with 59 nests, but most of those are not active. They don't know how many birds are there, Hu said.

The largest number are on Maui at Haleakala with about 500 pairs. Petrels have been seen on Kauai, but their nests have never been found.

About $20,000 to $30,000 a year is needed to protect the birds, Hu said.

Last year the park got about $30,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to study the birds.

It got about $3,000 this year, but is hoping to obtain more.

The park uses volunteers to help with the work, Lane said.

But it takes unusually dedicated people to camp out almost two miles high on a nearly barren lava flow with a helicopter being the only satisfactory way in and out.