It seems counterproductive, at the least, to release hundreds of thousands of 6-legged, flying harpoons into a place where a portion of their population is spreading a plague that has several species of native Hawaiian honeycreepers — some endemic only to Kaua‘i — fighting for their very existence.
It could be viewed as inhumane, careless, insensitive or even cruel, callous and cold-blooded as the forest birds face possible extinction because of the blood-sucking scourge.
Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project staff, however, heralded the first release of male mosquitoes into a state forest reserve on the Garden Isle’s vast Alakaʻi Plateau as a momentous milestone in the battle against avian malaria and efforts to save the birds that the often-deadly disease is essentially eradicating…