A dramatic battle to save rare Honeycreeper birds that exist only in Hawaii is itself fighting for survival, as approved funding for an ongoing assault on avian malaria now is frozen by the Trump administration, according to state officials. 

“The current federal funding situation remains uncertain, creating challenges for programs like ours. Ninety percent of our previously protected funding is currently frozen by the federal government,” according to an email Thursday from Hanna Mounce, manager of the Maui Forest Birds Recovery Project. The email was sent to stakeholders and potential donors and was obtained by National Parks Traveler.

The program, seen as a potential savior for bird species that had been on a short path to extinction, is a state, federal and local partnership focused in Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui. In a massive attack on mosquitoes that transmit the disease, the project each week for the past 15 months has been releasing droves of male mosquitos that are incompatible with the region’s females, causing their eggs to fail.

The Biden administration allocated $14.4 million for the mosquito eradication from 2022 to 2024 via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Some of those funds have launched and carried the project until now, but state officials say they are unable to access millions more that is due the project because of the freeze by the administration. Without the federal funding to pay for staff and supplies, the project will have to halt, Mounce’s email said. 

President Donald Trump on his first day in office issued an executive order freezing all funding distributed through the Inflation Reduction Act and Biden's infrastructure package.

A federal judge this past Tuesday said a funding freeze ordered by the Office of Management and Budget overstepped OMB's authority, saying it would not likely stand up to a challenge and that the "scope of power OMB seeks to claim is 'breathtaking,' and its ramifications are massive. .. Because there is no clear statutory hook for this broad assertion of power..."

Asked to comment about the freeze and its impact on the Maui bird program and the potential to lift it, Kristen Oleyte-Velasco, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisory public affairs officer for the Pacific Islands, pointed the Traveler on Thursday to Trump's executive order on his first day in office called “Unleashing American Energy.” She noted a section that states, “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58).”

That section also says agencies must review their polices, programs, and spending of appropriated funds to ensure they are consistent with the goals of the overall executive order.

The University of Hawaii administers the funding to the agencies that conduct the bird protection and recovery work. 

This is a “pivotal moment in Maui” conservation, said the email from Mounce, who declined an interview request from the Traveler. Scientists say that interruption of the weekly release, via drones and other methods, would thwart suppression of the disease-carrying mosquitos as they continue to flourish in the wild and transmit the fatal avian malaria in the precarious island environment.

“The thought of pausing or stopping now is simply unfathomable. We have worked too hard and come too far to let uncertainty halt our progress,” wrote Mounce, who added that she’s worked for two decades on the multi-agency Maui forest bird projects.

Pausing or cutting off funding for the avian malaria program on Maui would hinder “one of the last possible efforts to save these birds,” said Patrick Hart, a University of Hawaii biologist who focuses on ecology and conservation of Hawaii birds but is not involved in the Maui mosquito eradication effort.

“It’s kind of the last tool in the tool belt to protect and save these Hawaii species from going extinct,” he said during a phone call. “It’s been a long process to get to this point" with the mosquito release program, Hart added. 

He characterizing any funding interruption in the mosquito release program  as "a complete shame” that would allow mosquitos transmitting avian malaria to flourish in the wild.

Honeycreeper birds that once numbered more than 50 different species in Hawaii have been under assault from habitat loss, invasive species, and predators that include even feral cats. Now, the mosquito-borne avian malaria is the main driver, according to scientists. Only 17 species survive in the state, some with fewer than 500 birds remaining, and many will be pushed to extinction within a decade, the Park Service says.

On Maui, there are just six Honeycreeper species left. One, the Kiwikiu, or Maui parrotbill, which exists only on the eastern slopes of Haleakala, counts individuals possibly numbering fewer than about 150 remaining in the wild, scientists say.

The National Park Service did not immediately respond Thursday to the Traveler’s emailed queries about the funding freeze and if it might be lifted.

The Park Service highlights East Maui for its “remarkable biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth” with habitat for native forest birds between 3,500 feet and 7,000 feet elevation. But the once more desirable higher elevations have become less so as warming climate has sent mosquitoes higher into the birds’ habitat, scientists say. The Biden administration in June 2023 prioritized Hawaii’s imperiled birds, announcing a commitment of $16 million “to prevent the imminent extinction of Hawaiian Forest Birds.”

“Hawaiian Forest Birds are a national treasure and represent an irreplaceable component of our natural heritage,” then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said when she announced the funding. “Birds like the ‘I’iwi, Kiwikiu and ‘Akikiki are found nowhere else in the world and have evolved over millennia to adapt to the distinct ecosystems and habitats of the Hawaiian Islands.”

The birds are culturally important to Native Hawaiian people and ecologically important as seed dipersers in the forest and pollinators for plants and flowers, scientists say.  Aside from the biological impetus to keep species from going extinct, the rare birds provide tourists an attraction that can benefit the state economically through bird watching tours.

The mosquito suppression program involves an incompatible insect technique involving introduction of mosquitos produced in a California lab into the wild to mate with females and reduce their reproductive potential. Avian malaria is described as causing the birds to have maimed limbs, missing eyes and impacts to their bills due to lesions, eventually killing even the healthiest birds.

The technique infects male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacteria known as Wolbachia, to reduce the mosquito vector of avian malaria. Male mosquitoes infected with the bacteria can mate but don’t produce offspring, causing populations to crash.