UH Hilo’s high-tech fight to protect Native birds

High in the misty forests of Mauna Loa, a high-tech acoustic network is recording the intricate calls of some of the world’s most endangered species — Hawaiʻi native forest birds. For 21 years, UH Hilo Biology professor Patrick “Pat” Hart, PhD, has dedicated his career to studying these rare and complex vocalizations. For the first time, technological advances in software and hardware have enabled him to capture and quickly process these unique soundscapes in an effort to protect a vanishing species.

Professor Pat Hart, PhD “Where we’re at now is what I was dreaming of 10 years ago,” Hart said with a smile. “It is becoming increasingly important to develop landscape-scale management tools to help prevent the decline and extinction of Hawaiian birds. But, in order for it to be effective, we need better info about how all of the different species are doing and exactly where they are.”

A warming climate is pushing deadly, disease-carrying mosquitoes into the once-safe, high-elevation habitats of Hawaiʻi’s incredibly vulnerable Native birds. The threat is immediate and severe. As Hart notes, “A single [mosquito] bite can kill our birds.”

To combat this, Hart’s LOHE (Listening Observatory for Hawaiian Ecosystems) Bioacoustics Lab teamed up with Google DeepMind. Together, they are utilizing Perch, an advanced AI machine learning software capable of identifying the highly adaptable songs of Hawaiian honeycreepers with incredible speed and accuracy.

“We’ve found that Hawaiian birds have some of the most complex and variable repertoires of any birds in the world,” Hart explained.

Tracking Native birds in remote terrain traditionally meant researchers had to manually listen to thousands of hours of audio — a slow process that often delayed urgent conservation action. Today, the lab places automated “song meters” through the forest that record continuously for months. Perch then analyzes the massive amount of audio data to measure call density, which is essentially the number of times a species sings per minute. This information gives conservationists highly accurate, near real-time population estimates or bird abundance.

A researcher deploys an automated song meter in the field to record months of continuous audio, which is then analyzed by Google’s Perch AI to monitor native bird populations

With this technology, the lab is launching the Ulu Manu Project at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, which Hart refers to as the “last best place for Hawaiian birds.” The initiative acts as a crucial line of defense. By tracking bird call densities alongside new mosquito eradication efforts, the team can spot population declines immediately.

“We’re trying to use these tools as an early warning system so that what happens in other parts of the state doesn’t happen at Hakalau,” explained Hart.

A major focus of the Ulu Manu Project is the Hawaiʻi ʻākepa, a brilliant orange bird that requires natural cavities in old-growth trees to nest and flourish. To entice these birds up into higher, newly-restored — and mosquito-free — forests, the team plans to install artificial nest boxes across the landscape.

The LOHE Bioacoustics Lab and the Hakalau field station offers students unparalleled access to cutting-edge conservation technology right in their backyard. As an alum of the UH system himself, having earned his doctorate in Zoology on the Ecology Evolution and Conservation Biology track from UH Mānoa, Hart is pleased UH Hilo can serve as such a dynamic incubator for the next generation of conservationists.

By deciphering the language of the forest and pairing it with cutting-edge AI, Professor Hart and his team are doing more than just listening — they are giving Hawaiʻi’s vanishing Native birds a fighting chance to not just survive, but someday thrive.

A UH Hilo student analyzes a spectrogram in the LOHE lab