A new study challenges a decades-old assumption about the loss of Hawaiʻi’s native waterbirds.
Challenging a half-century-old explanation for the loss of Hawaiʻi’s native birds, a new study from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa reports that there is no scientific evidence showing Indigenous People hunted waterbird species to extinction. Published in the journal Ecosphere, the research overturns this long-repeated claim and proposes a broader, evidence-based framework for understanding why these birds disappeared.
After reviewing the available data, the researchers found no support for the idea that Indigenous People over hunted waterbirds into extinction. Instead, the authors argue that multiple pressures likely drove the declines, including climate change, invasive species, and shifts in land use, with many of these impacts occurring either before Polynesian arrival or after Indigenous stewardship was suppressed.
The study also suggests that several waterbirds now considered endangered may have reached their greatest abundance shortly before Europeans arrived, during a period when wetland management was central to Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) society.
Refuting conservation theories
“So much of science is biased by the notion that humans are inevitable agents of ecocide, and we destroy nature wherever we go. This idea has shaped the dominant narrative in conservation, which automatically places the blame for extinctions on the first people—the Indigenous People—of a place. Even where there is zero scientific evidence to support it, the myth of Hawaiians hunting birds to extinctions took root in Hawaiʻi and for decades has been taught as if it was a scientific fact,” shares Kawika Winter, associate professor at UH Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), director of the Heʻeia National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), and co-author of the paper.
“Our study not only dispels this myth, but also contributes to a growing body of evidence that Indigenous stewardship represents the best ways for native birds to thrive in a world where humans are not going away.”
The researchers revisit the existing evidence while setting aside a bias that the field has increasingly been criticized for: the assumption that people are separate from nature and inevitably harmful to it. By taking this approach, the study offers a more layered view of the past and supports stronger, more evidence driven directions for conservation research.
“Science has matured to a point where graduate students are being trained to challenge its own long-standing world view,” notes Kristen Harmon, lead author on the paper who recently earned a PhD from UH Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR) Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management. “Our interpretation of historical ecology, how ecological systems change over time, influences our approaches to solving global-scale ecological problems. Bringing together information from different disciplines and knowledge systems can yield a more accurate picture of reality, which is ultimately the goal of every scientist.”
Empowering Indigenous stewardship
The authors say the findings could shift how conservation is carried out in Hawaiʻi, with particular relevance for efforts to rebuild endangered waterbird populations, including ʻalae ʻula (Gallinula chloropus) and ʻaeʻo (Himantopus mexicanus knudseni).
“Recent studies support what Hawaiians have always known—that restoration of loʻi (wetland agro-ecosystems) is critically important to bring these waterbirds into abundance again,” said Melissa Price, an Associate Professor who runs the Wildlife Ecology Lab at CTAHR. “If we wish to transform our islands from the ‘Extinction Capital of the World’ into the ‘Recovery Capital of the World,’ we need to restore relationships between nature and communities.”
This new understanding could help change how we protect these birds and mend long-standing disagreements in the community.
Ulalia Woodside Lee, who was not a part of this research project, offered some reflections as the Hawai‘i and Palmyra Executive Director for The Nature Conservancy, “For generations, Native Hawaiians have been criticized for causing the extinctions of our precious native birds. This has contributed to a breakdown in trust between the Hawaiian community and conservationists, and the exclusion of Native Hawaiians from important conservation decisions. This study will help us to move past those untruths, so that we can all move together into a brighter future where our native species are thriving again.”
Reference: “The “regime shift extinctions” hypothesis and mass extinction of waterbirds in Hawaiʻi” by Kristen C. Harmon, Melissa R. Price and Kawika B. Winter, 13 January 2026, Ecosphere.
DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70445
Funding: Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources, Heʻeia National Estuarine Research Reserve
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