Geoff Malosh
Nēnē - Hawaii
Adult at Princeville, Kauai. Also known as the Hawaiian Goose, the Nene is considered the rarest goose species in the world. It is a member of the genus Branta and appears to have descended from the Canada Goose, which probably arrived on the Hawaiian Islands some 500,000 years ago, not long after the present Big Island was formed. They were probably common on all the major islands, but with the arrival of humans, and especially Europeans in the 1800s, came many non-native predators and much habitat destruction. The Nene was driven to the brink of extinction, with perhaps as few as 30 birds surviving in the wild in the 1950s. But they were brought back via a program of captive breeding, and today they have a relatively stable wild population again (if still quite rare overall) especially on Kauai. The island of Kauai has the smallest populations of introduced mammalian predators of all the major Hawaiian islands, and the Nene is quite easy to find there these days. In fact they seemed much more common around Princeville than I remember even from my previous trip to Kauai in 2010, but that might have just been my luck this time compared to last.
Nēnē - Hawaii
Adult at Princeville, Kauai. Also known as the Hawaiian Goose, the Nene is considered the rarest goose species in the world. It is a member of the genus Branta and appears to have descended from the Canada Goose, which probably arrived on the Hawaiian Islands some 500,000 years ago, not long after the present Big Island was formed. They were probably common on all the major islands, but with the arrival of humans, and especially Europeans in the 1800s, came many non-native predators and much habitat destruction. The Nene was driven to the brink of extinction, with perhaps as few as 30 birds surviving in the wild in the 1950s. But they were brought back via a program of captive breeding, and today they have a relatively stable wild population again (if still quite rare overall) especially on Kauai. The island of Kauai has the smallest populations of introduced mammalian predators of all the major Hawaiian islands, and the Nene is quite easy to find there these days. In fact they seemed much more common around Princeville than I remember even from my previous trip to Kauai in 2010, but that might have just been my luck this time compared to last.