The U.S. Military Could Wipe Out This Tiny Pacific Island Bird
A planned Defense Department training site in the Northern
Marianas threatens to destroy the Tinian monarch's last bit of habitat.
In 2004, the United States government declared that a tiny
and imperiled Pacific island bird called the Tinian monarch had pulled back
from the brink of extinction and removed it from the endangered
species list. A little over a decade later, that rare success story
appears to be at risk. The new threat? The U.S. government.
A Tinian monarch. (Photo: Devon Pike/Wikimedia Commons)
The Department of Defense has proposed a major new training
site on Tinian, the 39-square-mile Mariana island on which the bird lives. If
approved, the live-fire training complex—a place where the military could
practice weapons targeting—would remove about 2,000 acres of Tinian monarch
habitat and take over one-eighth of the island. That could have quite an impact on the birds, which have
lost much of their historic habitat to deforestation, development, and planting
of nonnative trees, according to a 2014report from
the U.S. Forest Service.
“The military will be removing habitat that cannot otherwise
be restored,” said Tara Easter, a scientist with the Center for Biological
Diversity, which in 2013 petitioned the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to return the Tinian monarch to the protection
of the Endangered Species Act. “Those birds they’re displacing can’t go
anywhere else because the island is so small and so much is already inhabited.”
Last September the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed with
the center’s petition and said the species may once again qualify for
protection. That announcement—the first step in a multiyear process that
would be necessary to protect the species—was opposed by
Tinian politician Jude Hofschneider, who in November said the Commonwealth of
the Northern Mariana Islands had taken steps to protect the species by
translocating 49 birds to a nearby island. Another 50 would follow this year,
he said.
“There’s no guarantee that those translocations are going to
work,” Easter said. “Tinian monarchs are notoriously difficult to handle in
captivity and relocate because they’re solitary and extremely territorial. It
shouldn’t prevent listing because no one really knows if that is going to be an
effective conservation method.”
Hofschneider, who did not respond to a request for comment,
also said the population of Tinian monarchs has soared in recent years to more
than 90,000, a number based on a 2013 survey of
Tinian’s wildlife conducted by the Department of the Navy. However, the
conservation organization BirdLife International uses data from one year
earlier to place the population much lower,
between 20,000 and 50,000 individuals.
Aside from habitat loss, Easter said she is worried about
the introduction of invasive species such as the brown
tree snake, which sneaks aboard military transport vehicles and has
devastated bird populations on nearby Guam. “A lot of people have already seen
brown tree snakes on Tinian and are really worried about a mass introduction
and what that would mean,” she said. “They haven’t been able to handle it on
Guam, and they wouldn’t be able to on Tinian either.”
Easter said she hopes an Endangered Species Act designation
could help revise the military’s proposals before it is too late for the Tinian
monarch. “That protection is really, really crucial to make sure that their
populations don’t plummet again as a result of these activities,” she said. “I
think if they were denied that protection, then the military could go forward
with their plans right now.” The Department of Defense, meanwhile, has not yet
secured funding for the base but last month said that it will conduct
new studies of the islands and that it expects no delays in its plans.
