SIX PALILA RELEASED INTO NEWLY RESTORED FOREST ON HAWAI’I ISLAND, MAY 21, 2019
(Maunakea, Hawai‘i) –On Sunday and Monday a half-dozen Palila, hatched and raised at the San Diego Zoo Global’s (SDZG) Keauhou Bird Conservation Center, flew in the open air for the first time in their lives. Palila, a distant relative of finches are the last surviving members of sixteen species of finch-billed, seed-eating birds in the main Hawaiian Islands. They were once found on Kaua‘i and O‘ahu, but are now found only high on the slopes of Mauna Kea. Found only on the up