A small gray-and-olive honeycreeper named Pakele was the last known ʻakikiki living wild in Kauaʻi's rainforests. Nobody has seen it since Aug. 29, 2025. More than a year later, state wildlife officials say the species is now believed to be extinct in the wild, and new research points squarely at the disease that has been quietly emptying Hawaiʻi's forests of its native birds: avian malaria.
A Single Bird, A Final Sighting
Pakele's last confirmed appearance came 14 months ago in the roughly 14-square-mile stretch of the Alakaʻi Wilderness Preserve that was the ʻakikiki's only known home, according to the seed facts behind this story. The bird had become something of a living symbol for a species already teetering on the edge. As The Garden Island reported, the ʻakikiki is now believed to be extinct in the wild, according to Hawaiʻi's Department of Land and Natural Resources.
New research strongly implicates avian malaria, spread by non-native mosquitoes, in the collapse of the species, the outlet reported. The disease has been creeping upslope into the high-elevation forests that were once cool and wet enough to keep mosquitoes — and the malaria parasite they carry — at bay.
What The Data Showed
The study behind the finding drew on monitoring by the Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project spanning 2015 to 2022, per the same account. Researchers compared breeding pairs and reproduction rates against disease prevalence over time, looking for what was actually killing the birds off.
What they found was not a story about failed nesting. Despite relatively stable nesting success, the population continued to collapse as avian malaria infections increased, the research team reported. A related DLNR release, distributed via EIN Presswire, put it plainly: increased mortality, rather than reproductive failure, drove the decline. In other words, ʻakikiki parents were still raising chicks — they just weren't surviving long enough, or in large enough numbers, to keep the species afloat.
The study was conducted by Justin Hite, Lisa Crampton and Eben Paxton, with funding from DLNR's Division of Forestry and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the garden island outlet's report noted. Hite serves as DOFAW's mosquito control project coordinator, and the paper was published in the journal Ornithological Applications.
From Hundreds Of Birds To None
The scale of the collapse is stark when laid against earlier survey numbers. A Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project survey estimated the ʻakikiki population at somewhere between 120 and 886 individuals in 2018. By 2023, surveyors detected no ʻakikiki at all, and a range-wide search in 2024 turned up just four birds before the species was considered functionally extinct that same year.
That mirrors a broader pattern documented elsewhere on the island. A separate study published in Biodiversity and Conservation found that only eight of Kauaʻi's 13 historic forest bird species remained as of a 2023 survey, with ʻakikiki undetected and excluded from the population analysis altogether. The research concluded that upslope migration of mosquito-vectored avian malaria on Kauaʻi has likely caused its rapid loss of avifaunal diversity.
A Threat That Reaches Beyond Kauaʻi
The danger is not confined to one island or one bird. A study of Oʻahu published in Biological Conservation found malaria infection widespread across all seven sites researchers sampled, at elevations ranging from 105 to 1,209 meters. The team collected 1,194 blood samples from 16 bird species and reported that transmission likely occurred year-round.
As of October, only a few ʻakekeʻe remained in the wild, while populations of ʻanianiau and Kauaʻi ʻamakihi had each fallen below 500 birds, according to the DLNR release.
What's Left: A Captive Flock
The ʻakikiki is not entirely gone. A conservation-breeding program that began in 2015 has kept the species alive in human care, with 31 birds reported as of September, according to the Garden Island report. DLNR and its partners at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Honolulu Zoo are now pursuing similar emergency measures — including conservation breeding and translocations to safer areas — for other declining species, the outlet reported.
Whether that captive population can ever be reintroduced to a landscape still dominated by mosquitoes remains an open question shaping Hawaiʻi's broader conservation strategy, as state and federal researchers weigh how to blunt a disease that has already reshaped the island's forests once.
