An extinct-in-the-wild sihek (also known as Guam kingfisher) has successfully hatched, marking a key milestone of an ambitious project to return the species into the wild.
The Sihek Recovery Program is an international collaboration between wildlife experts across the world – including
global conservation charity ZSL – who are working together to restore a wild population of this species, which is currently only found in human care.
The female chick hatched on 28 April at Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas, US, and is being cared for around the clock by a team of specialists to ensure the precious youngster’s survival – including two keepers from ZSL’s conservation zoos, London
and Whipsnade, who travelled to the US as part of the organisations wider initiative to recover extinct-in-the-wild species.
Video: ZSL/Supplied
The Sihek Recovery Program is an international collaboration between wildlife experts across the world – including
global conservation charity ZSL – who are working together to restore a wild population of this species, which is currently only found in human care.
The female chick hatched on 28 April at Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas, US, and is being cared for around the clock by a team of specialists to ensure the precious youngster’s survival – including two keepers from ZSL’s conservation zoos, London
and Whipsnade, who travelled to the US as part of the organisations wider initiative to recover extinct-in-the-wild species.
Video: ZSL/Supplied
Category
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00 I'm about to go to a zoo called Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas
00:04 and we're going to be working with Guam kingfisher or as it is in the native Chamorro language,
00:10 sea heck. We'll be working with hatching out eggs from this species and then hand rearing the chicks
00:15 with the ultimate aim of translocating this species to a tiny island called Palmyra
00:20 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and from there the birds will be released into the wild
00:25 and it's basically a trial run for hopefully an eventual reintroduction to Guam where the
00:31 species is currently extinct in the wild. The sea heck are this most beautiful kingfisher species
00:38 and sadly at the end of World War II there was an accidental introduction of a snake species,
00:46 a brown tree snake. These snakes established and effectively started eating all of the avi
00:52 fauna on the island including the sea heck. Lots of birds went extinct and two of them were rescued,
00:58 one of them being the sea heck and that's why we still have them. We're very excited to be sending
01:02 out two of our very experienced keepers. These keepers have developed a lot of expertise in
01:08 incubation and hand rearing of a range of bird species that we keep here in our zoos and it's
01:13 amazing to be able to collaborate with North American experts in this in the sea hack species
01:17 and working with them to support them to actually return the bird back into a wild situation.
01:23 I've been working at ZSL for the past five years now. Here at London we've had a lot of success
01:28 previously with extinct in the wild species such as our sakura doves. Previously at Whipsnade we've
01:33 had a lot of hand rearing experience especially with our blue crown laughing thrush. So with those
01:37 skills hopefully we can transfer them over to the facility in Demerica and try and bring some of our
01:42 expertise with it. This feels like an absolute once in a lifetime opportunity for me and it's
01:47 absolutely why I decided to become a zookeeper in the first place to make sure that I can get
01:51 involved in a lot of conservation projects and especially conservation projects with such
01:56 significance. The fact that we've got these birds in this case the sea heck safely under human care
02:03 and zoos shows that we can do something. We've prevented extinction and the fate of sea heck
02:10 and other extinct and wild species is absolutely in our hands. We can return these species to nature
02:16 and have vibrant wild populations again. The work that we're doing shows that we can reverse
02:20 biodiversity declines, we can fix the mistakes of our past and conservation does work. And so I think
02:28 species like sea hecker are incredibly important because they will tell a story of hope and what
02:33 we can do and get right if we try.