Scientists were racing to save this rare bird from extinction. Then came the super typhoon.

When the Mariana crow calls, it’s taken as a warning. 

To the Indigenous CHamoru people of the Mariana Islands, the bird is known as the Åga, an ancestral messenger who alerts the community of impending illness or weather disaster. In the dense canopy of Rota’s limestone forest, where the Mariana crow lives, it is a gardener — a key seed disperser from which the lush canopy grows. 

According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the species is endemic to Guam and the nearby island of Rota, a US territory, which means they live nowhere else on Earth. They once numbered in the thousands. But over the past 60 years, they have vanished from Guam and dwindled on Rota. Roughly 300 survive today.

Now teetering on the brink of extinction, every remaining Mariana crow represents a fragile ecosystem and a deep cultural lineage the islands cannot afford to lose. Researchers from the University of Washington and ecologists from the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance are working tirelessly to make sure that doesn’t happen. 

The effort to prevent the bird’s precipitous decline in the wild has been underway for more than two decades. Beginning in 2005 with field monitoring and observation, researchers realized they would have to step in and raise the birds in human-assisted aviaries to save the species. By 2016, teams collected their first clutch of wild eggs and successfully released the first cohort back into the forest the following year. In the years since, the active recovery program has bred dozens of birds in captivity and has given the wild population a boost that researchers hope the birds can eventually sustain on their own — all made possible through millions of dollars in federal grants and academic funding, decades of field research, and tight coordination among local and federal partners. 

But in July, the entire effort was endangered by one of the most drastic events to hit the region in years. For days, Category 5 Super Typhoon Bavi pummeled the island. As it barreled down, conservationists realized they needed to act fast and save the species, so they assembled makeshift indoor aviaries inside the scientists’ quarters on the research base. The small crew boarded up windows and stocked up on food. Only weeks into their new lives in the forest, the crows were back inside. Their caretakers would ride out the storm beside them. 

The decision saved the flock. 

The team successfully brought 13 birds to safety before the storm hit. Of the nine that weren’t captured, two died, and one was emaciated and had a minor wing injury from the storm. The rest of the wild population took a hit, too, though researchers are still accounting for the total loss. The toll on the ongoing conservation work was profound. Bavi obliterated the facility’s outdoor aviaries, leaving an exhausted crew to care for the agitated Mariana crow in a compound that still remains without power just as another storm, Category 4 Typhoon Champi, passed through the islands in mid-October. 

Ecologist Sarah Faegre, the primary investigator for the University of Washington’s Rota Avian Behavioral Ecology Program, was there to assess the damage. The enormous aviary, which her own father, an architect, built more than a decade ago, had survived its fair share of typhoons. But last month, it lay collapsed. “It was heartbreaking,” she told me. “It nearly made me cry.” The massive, industrial-grade plastic pipe frame that held the aviary together, Faegre said, “looked like a pile of broken bones.”

Around the world, countless endangered animals are a single disaster from absolute collapse. 

Decades of habitat loss, shifting climate and degrading ecosystems have pushed much of the planet’s biodiversity to precariously low populations. But advances in science and conservation have yielded remarkable recoveries: The Endangered Species Act alone has clawed back nearly 300 species — the bald eagle, humpback whale, and grizzly bear among them — from the precipice. 

Still, the survival of many more animals today faces a dangerous bottleneck — sometimes it’s just a single aviary, a small team of researchers, and a modest pot of funding that stands in the way of extinction. 

At the same time, shifting political tides threaten to undermine those efforts even further. In the US, the Trump administration has slashed the very funding that could help an effort like breeding the Mariana crows recover from a major storm.

“If we’re no longer able to access funding and take action to do restoration work, it’s less likely that the species will ever recover and be able to be removed from the [endangered species] list,” said Sara Gottlieb, with the Nature Conservancy. 

With such existential challenges, it’s worth questioning why Faegre and others are so dedicated to saving the Mariana crow population. But in late October, even in the midst of Bavi’s aftermath, the research team discovered something hopeful. 

A precarious moment

The Mariana Islands, a 15-island archipelago that includes the US territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, are regularly hit with tropical storms. But for generations, the Mariana crow was able to persist in the remote, northern island of Rota — a model of a small, resilient ecosystem in part because its geography has protected it from the most severe disasters.

“Rota and the Mariana crow have seen many typhoons throughout history and have proven resilience,” said Phillip Hannon, research coordinator for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Mariana crow rear-and-release program. “The jungle, too, regenerates very quickly in the heat and humidity of a tropical island.” 

But as climate change has fueled more frequent and severe storms, even the historically buffered areas are more exposed than ever. And this year, abnormally warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific have caused an unusual clustering of typhoon activity this year. 

For the Mariana crow, the situation was already grave. The population was completely wiped out from Guam by the late 1990s and early 2000s after a new predator, the brown tree snake — introduced into Guam via World War II military cargo ships — devastated native nests. With Guam’s population gone, the species’ survival now hinges entirely on Rota, a 33-square-mile island north of Guam where severe typhoons repeatedly thrash the native forest canopy the species uses for nesting. 

But intensifying super typhoons are striking an ecosystem already fractured by habitat loss and invasive species from rampant militarization. With every storm hitting an already diminished population, the work of conservationists is a crucial step to buy more time so that wildlife can eventually rebound on its own.

The joint Mariana crow recovery project by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), the University of Washington, and local partners across Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands has boosted the population from its lowest — just roughly 130 individuals — to  300 birds, 79 of which were reared and reintroduced by SDZWA.

But this conservation breeding approach is “a method of last resort” only used when a species is on the absolute brink of extinction, like the California condor or the Hawaiian crow known as ‘Alalā, said Ronald Swaisgood, director of recovery ecology at the San Diego Zoo.

“All of these species absolutely depend on the critical habitat; otherwise, they’ll all be in breeding centers, and none will be in the wild,” Swaisgood said. “But sometimes that’s where we unfortunately finish because increasingly more species require this kind of infrastructure, which is very costly, but it’s our only remaining tool to prevent extinction of some of these species.”

Although it might sound like a long shot, many of these last-resort strategies have had real success. In East Tennessee, ecologists successfully recovered the Smoky Madtom. In the 1980s, decades after the tiny, nocturnal Smoky Madtom catfish was accidentally wiped out of its native creek, a researcher named Gerry Dinkins rediscovered a fragile surviving population. With the help of federal funding, scientists gathered a handful of wild eggs during the summer spawning season, brought them back to the lab to incubate, then nurtured the fragile fry in specialized aquariums, away from predators and other threats. Once the young madtoms were strong enough to fend for themselves, they carried them back to their native home in Abrams Creek, slipping them into the water at night to match their nocturnal habits and keep hungry birds and larger fish at bay.

These surviving populations provide more time to address the core causes of long-term decline. A 2020 US Fish and Wildlife Service review warned that climate change poses a growing long-term threat to the Smoky Madtom, as rising temperatures and extreme droughts dry up critical stream habitats. Severe low-water events, like the 2016 drought that left up to half of Citico Creek bone-dry, could endanger the catfish by disrupting nesting, reducing reproduction, and increasing mortality. 

“Anything that significantly changes the habitat condition in the area, including catastrophic storms causing large areas of tree blow-downs and landslides or wildfire leading to sudden inputs of sediments or toxins into the streams where these fish live could result in major impacts to the species,” Gottlieb said. 

All it takes is one wild nest

After Champi passed in mid-October, Faegre was walking through Rota’s forests when she spotted an encouraging sign that a Mariana crow — that had been reintroduced into the forest years ago — had left behind: a single, modest nest. 

It was one of the first that researchers found in October since Bavi made landfall. The island’s canopy remains noticeably more patchy and open than the Mariana crow’s preferred dense nesting habitat, but Faegre watched a released trio — made up of two males and an unrelated female — actively collecting roots and plant fibers, putting the finishing touches on a nest that’s now nearly complete. 

Because the crows typically begin nesting in August, researchers were unsure if they would attempt to breed at all this season. Yet despite the compromised environment and a delayed start, Faegre said if all goes well, the throuple — as the team has taken to calling them — could lay eggs in a week or two.

Nearly two weeks after Bavi battered the island, the Mariana crows that researchers scrambled to save during the worst days of the storm were rereleased into the wild. Fallen trees and downed power poles blocked the roads, delaying the birds’ return. In the meantime, the team built emergency outdoor aviaries to get the birds back outside. But with island power knocked out for months, survival became a logistical battle, Faegre said. The facility relied on a generator to preserve the crows’ food, running it just a few hours a day to stretch scarce fuel. When the freezer food eventually spoiled, the team turned to shelf-stable rations and later called on partners in Guam to ship in the fresh food the crows desperately needed. 

“Bavi was an incredibly powerful storm, much worse than any in the living memory of the people of Rota,” Faegre said. “To this day, more than three months later, the Mariana crow facility and many homes on Rota remain without power,” adding that some of the crew members with power are storing the Mariana crow’s food at their homes.

Just before Bavi struck, the team was already caring for eight injured Mariana crow. Two were previously released birds recovering from injuries sustained during Super Typhoon Sinlaku, a Category 5 storm that hit just months earlier. According to Faegre, injured crows are typically transferred for rehabilitation and eventual rerelease. But due to the severity of the injuries, six of the birds could not return to their native habitat and were relocated to the St. Louis Zoo early this month.

Schoolchildren who took frequent field trips to the Rota facility named two of the relocated birds, according to Faegre. One named Suette means “lucky” in CHamoru, while another named Lina’la means “life.”

“The sentiment is that these birds were lucky and got a second chance at life,” Faegre said. “Suette, for example, tackled a crab that was a bit too big for him when he was a young bird in the wild. He lost a wing to the crab but has done very well in human care since then.”

As climate change accelerates, Swaisgood said relying on second chances won’t be enough. To ensure the Mariana crow survives the next storm and thrives beyond it, the team has been exploring new ways to diversify and expand the Mariana crow’s habitats across safer, more varied ecosystems like the neighboring Northern islands. 

But to do so, they need funding. The program has already proven successful, with recent analyses indicating a modest recovery in the Mariana crow population and that the decline has stopped. Yet Swaisgood said appropriated federal funds are failing to reach them. “Several of our projects, the ones that depend on federal funding, are running out,” he said. 

The question is whether nature can do so fast enough to survive more upheaval. While forests and habitats may eventually rebound, time is running out faster than evolution or natural recovery can match. Still, targeted conservation acts as an indispensable bridge to keep species hanging on while working towards larger systemic solutions.

“Everywhere in the world, including the environment, is always going to be impacted,” Gottlieb said. “But what we do see over and over is that these areas can recover. Sometimes even on their own.”