The Official Houston Zoo Blog

If you are flying west all day – are you chasing the sun or following it…

We are headed to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands; namely Saipan.

You might be asking the same thing my family and friends did right after I told them where I was headed – you are going where…. You are doing what???

I am on my way to do some field work for the Houston Zoo and the AZA community.

The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands is a chain of about 14 islands in the Pacific around 3000 miles west of Hawaii.  It is probably considered nearest to the Philippine Islands , if you could call it near.  It is over 1400 miles to the Phillipines; think the distance from New York to Houston.

For over 5 years, there has been a group of AZA bird professionals doing some important work in this part of the world – currently all of the bird species on the Marianas islands that have human habitation are under threat from the Brown Tree Snake (Boiga irregularis).  All of the birds on these islands evolved in a way that left them unprepared to deal with a threat from this predator.

As a way to hopefully keep some of these wonderful species from extinction, AZA has been working on the Marianas Avi-fauna Conservation Project.  By both capturing some of these birds for a ‘safety’ population in US zoos and working with translocation of various species to uninhabited, predator -free islands, we are working to protect these birds.

This is where I am and this is what I am doing.

Read the whole series here!

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• Bird Conservation in Saipan:Even NASA would be jealous of our acronyms Every industry has its own special lingo…. here is how I could tell you about my day in ‘our’ lingo…...
• Bird Conservation in Saipan: I get to use a Machete!!! But not while holding birds…. Early in the day, we head to the end of the island to set-up the...
• Bird Conservation in Saipan: Beware – Don’t Blog While Jet-lagged… …or try to assemble bird holding cages for that matter. We left on Saturday morning at around 9:30 AM and...
• Bird Conservation in Saipan: It is gonna be a long, long day… The 24 remaining birds are being shipped stateside to AZA zoos.  If I thought my flight was going to be...
• Bird Conservation in Saipan: Moving on (to a little island in the sea) One of the primary goals of this field work is to translocate some of the critically endangered Golden White-eyes to...