Reporter’s Notebook: Preserving our natural heritage

Story and photos by Kianna Reyes, MP Contributor 

09/08/2025 - My internship with the Ecology of Bird Loss Project started in late May of 2025, but officially began in June. I was flown from my home island of Saipan to Guåhan, where the project’s focus on såli would soon have us checking bird houses on the Anderson Air Force Base. This was where the island’s primary population of såli survived in droves, largely due to the area’s active surveillance and disposal of brown tree snakes. The såli - or Micronesian starling (scientific name aplonis opaca) - are spry, medium-sized black birds with long, pointy bills and a piercing signature call. With glossy black feathers and intelligent golden eyes, these birds have existed in the Marianas alongside people for millennia, even sharing their name with a long-favored Chamorro condiment - donne’ (hence the term donne’ såli). 

The purpose of this internship was to collect data from different birds across the Marianas Islands, with the såli being of particular interest due to its endemic nature and far-ranging seed-spreading capability. Haldre Rogers, the director of the program, seeks to examine the impacts of the brown tree snake on the population of såli in the islands of Guåhan and the CNMI. I was taken on the project under the title of Undergraduate Field Assistant, and my primary responsibility was to help collect wild birds, note their data, and extract and organize DNA samples.

The first week of work was filled with PowerPoint introductions and data processing from the previous internship cohort. Additionally, a UXO briefing was attended for us to gain temporary access to the base to monitor the birdhouses, which were, surprisingly to me, used exclusively by såli. This nest box monitoring protocol was to check and see if the boxes held eggs, live young, or remained empty. If they were young, how many young were there? And if the young had feathers, were they old enough to fledge? These were the questions we sought to answer during monitoring. Notably, the society of såli on-base had strong social groups that often congregated atop the foliage of trees, buildings, and poles - dive-bombing unsuspecting interns who had the responsibility of checking the nest boxes. Subsequently, this would often be a sign that the såli had young to protect, which was altogether positive. 

Although såli rarely occur outside of the AAFB, wild encounters can still be had in limestone forests. This trip to Guahan marked the very first time I had heard the familiar call of såli in the wild. Two individuals were spotted flying overhead as we made our way deeper into the jungles, with Haldre noting that they must have been a nesting pair. Our weeks in Guahan were peppered with opportunities like this - we would regroup with the rest of the team to hike places like Litekyan and Thousand Steps, gaining experience in flora ID and arthropod collection. At Thousand Steps, I also had the pleasure of seeing the endangered, elusive eight-spotted butterfly - a rarity to most of the island. 

Early on in our internship, we were also boated to Dåno for a brief excursion, where we were split into teams of four for surveying. Our Dåno task was to monitor the land for the presence of brown tree snakes. Dåno had a healthy population of terns, so surveying for snakes was crucial to ensuring bird survival prevailed. The survey went on from the afternoon to night. At night, we concluded that no snakes had been located and were boated off and driven back to Hagatña to continue our regular research.

Fieldwork officially began on the island of Saipan, the next stop on our itinerary when our time in Guahan concluded. Unfortunately, first-time interns were excluded from traveling to Aguiguan due to the dangers of the terrain. In Saipan, workdays were often scheduled to begin at 4 a.m., where we would leave the field house to set up mist nets to capture birds in designated wild areas. Mist nets were structured like volleyball nets, with smaller netting to capture and hold birds safely in place. Commonly captured birds were the Rufous fantail, bridled white-eye, and the Marianas honeyeater. At times, kingfishers, golden white-eyes, and Marianas fruit doves would ram into the nets as well. From these birds, we would extract measurements of the wings, legs, and beaks. If the bird was a pollinator (such as the egigi - Marianas honeyeater), then their beaks would be swabbed, and the swabs broken into sample vials. When birds were extracted from the nets, they were trapped in white pouches for a period of 15 - 30 minutes before processing. These bags would be examined for fecal matter by interns as data processing was ongoing, and whatever fecal matter resided in the bags was put into a sample vial as well. Although interns were not permitted to take blood samples, the task of setting up the station to ensure the job went smoothly was one of the duties that fell to people with free hands. 

Much of the same routine took place in the islands of Rota and Tinian, although we only had a week’s worth of data collection on each island. Although the Marianas Islands are abundant with såli, these birds are wealthy with intellect and rarely make the mistake of running into nets more than once. The weather would also play a huge factor in determining bird collection. Once the rain started, the nets would have to be closed. In these months, rain and winds were never in short supply. Thus, reaching the quota for såli collection on the smaller islands of Rota and Tinian at this time was a difficult task. However, Tinian was where I had the pleasure of capturing and processing data from the famous Tinian monarch, and Rota was where I heard the throaty call of the Åga (Marianas crow) for the very first time. 

Despite the workload on the field, data from the field also had to be double-checked and processed into online shareable drives. For a while, I remained under the tutelage of Jason Gregg, one of the scientists who rediscovered the Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon in Papua New Guinea after it was thought to have gone extinct. A seasoned researcher in avian wildlife and helpful mentor, Gregg had shared a few facets of working on the project that inspired the viral video of the Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon’s rediscovery while we spoke of the atmosphere of Western environmental science in Indigenous spaces. Internships similar to this one, granted by EBL, are critical for young aspiring scientists, lending undergraduates a glimpse into the world of data collection and analysis. The benefit of contributing to the wellness of the Marianas was my foremost priority when applying for this research position, but I could not have had this opportunity had I neglected to pursue an AA in Natural Resource Management at the Northern Marianas College.

The Pasifika community is urgently lacking in young environmental scientists. Destruction of habitat and the introduction of non-native invasive species remain the utmost concerns for endemic wildlife, but rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures will soon alter our way of life as well. Our need for educated young minds to represent our Pasifika communities has never been more urgent - at the same time, funding for educational opportunities and environmental programs has been massively reduced in the face of new leadership.

This leaves us with a critical question: How can we, as the next generation of Pasifika leaders, balance our individual ambitions with our collective responsibility to preserve what remains of our natural heritage?