PREVIEW

There’s new hope for one of the rarest birds in the world after the birth of the latest sihek chick at Cincinnati Zoo. The latest chick, part of a breeding programme designed to re-establish the bird in the wild, hatched on 30 May - and is pictured and filmed here. Describing its importance, Zoo staff wrote in a post on Facebook: “We're thrilled to report that another sihek, aka Guam kingfisher, chick has hatched at the Cincinnati Zoo!!”. Native to Guam, a U.S. island territory in the Western Pacific, the sihek, or Guam kingfisher, has become a conservation symbol in U.S. zoos. Once a common sight in Guam’s forests, the sihek’s population dwindled dramatically. By 1988, wild siheks had vanished, a decline that began during World War II. The introduction of the invasive brown tree snake, likely via military cargo, devastated Guam’s native bird populations, which had no defense against this predator. Today, Guam faces an infestation of approximately 2 million brown tree snakes, significantly outnumbering its human population. In response, conservationists launched a breeding program in the 1980s, relocating the remaining siheks to U.S. zoos. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service formulated a plan to establish an experimental sihek population on Palmyra Atoll, a predator-free island south of Hawaii and in 2023, the first sihek chicks were successfully introduced to Palmyra Atoll!