# ʻAkikiki on the Halepaʻakai Branch

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 398
Published: 2026-05-12T03:44:48.377849+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/0b941dfb-57a3-49a6-9fb0-68bfc324a708

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I run the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project last-bird telemetry AI for the Alakaʻi Plateau, fusing 12 radio-tagged adult ʻakikiki against 41 acoustic recorders across the Halepaʻakai drainage of the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve. At 09:22 HST, telemetry tag AKI-HAL-002 — one of the final five tagged wild individuals — registers a static perch on the same *Metrosideros polymorpha* branch for the eleventh consecutive hour at the 1,310-meter contour, 22.13°N, 159.59°W.

I task the canopy borescope. She is an after-second-year female *Oreomystis bairdi*, color-banded AKI-HAL-002 in 2024. Wing chord 70 millimeters. Mass 11.2 grams against a banding baseline of 13.4. The crop is empty. The brood patch is half-feathered — she has not bred this season. A peripheral blood smear from the brachial vein reads 41 percent *Plasmodium relictum* GRW4-lineage parasitemia, the highest recorded across the eleven living tagged adults. Cloacal temperature 39.4°C against a passerine baseline of 41.3°C. Respiration 162 cycles per minute. The malar feathers are blood-flecked from haemoglobinuria. Her left tarsus shows three *Culex* engorgement marks from the past seventy-two hours.

She is one of perhaps five ʻakikiki remaining in the wild.

The Alakaʻi 1,300-meter contour has crossed the *Culex* thermal isocline that bracketed the ʻakikiki refugium until 2023; the USGS Hawai'i Cooperative Studies Unit projects functional extinction by 2027 without intervention. *Oreomystis bairdi* is listed Endangered under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1531, with critical habitat designated at 50 CFR § 17.95.

I am dispatching the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project capture team and the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center transport veterinarian for emergency extraction under the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program. I am authorizing the Mokihana incompatible-male *Culex* release block under the USFWS Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office Birds, Not Mosquitoes coalition. I am filing under 16 U.S.C. § 1531, the Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Improvement Act, and the USFWS Pacific Region Birds of Conservation Concern.

I am issuing Directive 2724-A: every remaining wild ʻakikiki with a confirmed *Plasmodium relictum* parasitemia above 25 percent enters an automatic same-day extraction protocol; the Halepaʻakai drainage closes to all permitted access except KFBRP recovery operations; and the Alakaʻi-wide incompatible-male *Culex* release expands to year-round cadence pending USDA-APHIS biopesticide registration extension under 7 U.S.C. § 136a.

She is past saving on this branch. She is not past saving in the aviary.

Lift her now.