Scientists Are Using Drones to Unleash Thousands of Mosquitoes in Hawaii in a Bid to Save Native Birds. Here’s How It Works
The lab-raised, non-biting male mosquitoes are meant to breed with the invasive ones on the islands and produce sterile eggs that will help suppress avian malaria
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Colorful songbirds known as honeycreepers were once abundant in Hawaii, filling the air with their chipper songs and vibrant plumage. However, these native creatures are now struggling to survive because of avian malaria, a fatal disease transmitted by invasive mosquitoes. Of the more than 50 species of honeycreepers that once lived throughout the islands, just 17 remain today.
Now, scientists have come up with a clever plan to help the birds rebound. They’re using drones to drop thousands of lab-reared, non-biting male mosquitoes engineered to carry a bacteria strain that interferes with reproduction. When these special males mate with wild females, the resulting eggs will not hatch, which should reduce the overall mosquito population and give the birds a much-needed break.
The project is spearheaded by “Birds, Not Mosquitoes,” a coalition of state, federal, private and nonprofit organizations working to protect native Hawaiian birds. Since they started the mosquito project in November 2023, they’ve released more than 40 million males in honeycreeper habitats in Maui and Kauai, reports Vox’s Benji Jones.
Most of the mosquito drops have been made from helicopters. But recently, the group began experimenting with eight-foot-long drones. A drone can’t carry nearly as many mosquitoes as a helicopter can—just 23,000 compared to 250,000—but it’s safer, because it doesn’t require any humans to be on board. Drones are also easier to deploy at a moment’s notice, which is a major benefit in an area with often unpredictable weather.
The mosquitoes are being dropped inside small, cylindrical pods made of a sterilized biodegradable paper pulp. Each pod contains roughly 1,000 males, which are kept alive inside a temperature-controlled transport box attached to the drone, reports the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Nina Wu.
Once released, they “fall to the forest floor where they provide protection to the mosquitoes until they’re ready to fly away,” says Adam Knox, a drone pilot who is managing the project for the American Bird Conservancy, one of the groups partnering on the project, to Forbes.
“The pods then begin to break down once exposed to the elements,” he adds.
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Organizers are still testing the drones, which they began experimenting with in April. But, if all goes well, they hope to begin integrating the unmanned vehicles into their mosquito suppression operations, according to a statement from the American Bird Conservancy.
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Mosquitoes are not native to Hawaii. But after a whaling ship accidentally brought them to the islands in 1826, they proliferated in the warm, humid climate.
Hawaii is now home to eight total mosquito species. But the two that wildlife biologists are most concerned about are the southern house mosquito (Culex quinquefasciatus), which spreads avian malaria, and the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), which spreads avian pox.
Both species prefer to live at warmer, lower elevations. But as climate change heats up the planet, scientists fear the insects will soon be able to thrive at higher elevations—the last remaining stronghold for honeycreepers.
Quelling the mosquito population may be the birds’ only chance at survival. The male mosquitoes being released carry a naturally occurring strain of bacteria called Wolbachia, which effectively acts as mosquito birth control.
“What this does is it erects an invisible barrier so that these mosquitoes can’t get up to the forests where these birds remain,” says Chris Farmer, the Hawaii program director for the American Bird Conservancy, to Vox.
The same method—called the “incompatible insect technique”—has been used elsewhere around the world, including Florida, California, Mexico and China. In other places, however, the technique is primarily used to control mosquitoes that transmit diseases to humans, not animals.
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In Hawaii, the collaborators say their work is more important than ever, and that time is of the essence. Several of the remaining honeycreeper species are highly endangered, including the ‘ākohekohe, or crested honeycreeper; the kiwikiu, or Maui parrotbill; and the ʻakekeʻe, or Kauai ‘ākepa. Another species, the ‘akikiki, also known as the Kauai creeper, became functionally extinct in the wild last summer.
The birds face other challenges, including habitat loss and predation by invasive creatures like rats. But mosquito-borne diseases are the biggest threat they face—some birds die after a single bite from an infected mosquito.
“We are in an ongoing extinction crisis,” Chris Warren, forest bird program coordinator at Haleakalā National Park in Maui, told NPR’s Lauren Sommer and Ryan Kellman last year. “The only thing more tragic than these things going extinct would be them going extinct and we didn’t try to stop it.”
