‘Extinct’ Guam kingfisher takes flight again after nearly 40 years

Story: 2024 C.E.  |  Last updated: April 30, 2026

Six Guam kingfishers — a bird known locally as the sihek — took their first free flight in nearly four decades on Sept. 23, 2024 C.E., when they were released into the forests of Palmyra Atoll in the central Pacific. The release marked a turning point for a species declared extinct in the wild in 1988 C.E., and the result of 35 years of painstaking captive breeding across multiple continents.

At a glance

• Sihek release: Six birds were freed into Palmyra Atoll, a predator-free U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge roughly 5,900 kilometers east of Guam, after a period of acclimatization following their arrival in late August 2024 C.E.
• Captive breeding program: The entire surviving population traces back to just 29 birds rescued in the 1980s C.E.; today around 45 breeding females remain, making every successful hatch a critical milestone.
• Radio tracking: Each released bird carries a small tracker so researchers can monitor movements, habitat use, and eventual breeding activity in the months ahead.

A bird nearly lost to an accidental predator

The sihek (Todiramphus cinnamominus) was once a common sight in the forests of Guam, a western Pacific island and U.S. territory. That changed in the 1940s C.E., when the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) arrived accidentally, likely as a stowaway on military cargo. The snake had no natural predators on the island and quickly decimated native wildlife, raiding nests and eating eggs across the bird community.

By the mid-1980s C.E., the sihek’s numbers had collapsed. A rescue mission brought 29 surviving birds into captivity, and those individuals became the entire genetic foundation of the species. For the next three and a half decades, zoos and conservation centers on two continents kept the sihek alive — bird by bird, clutch by clutch.

From Kansas to the Pacific

The first sihek chick of the 2024 C.E. season hatched in April at Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas. Keepers from the Zoological Society of London’s Whipsnade and London zoos flew in to provide round-the-clock care. It was a global effort concentrated on one small bird.

In late August, a group of young sihek were transported by plane to Palmyra Atoll. After weeks of acclimatization in temporary aviaries, six birds were released on Sept. 23. Researchers are providing supplemental food while the birds learn to hunt insects, geckos, and other small prey on their own.

“It has been a multiyear endeavor to get the birds to this point, from breeding the sihek, incubating the eggs, hand rearing the chicks and now releasing them in Palmyra,” said Erica Royer, an aviculturist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington, D.C. “It is monumental to be able to reintroduce these individuals into the wild after more than three decades.”

What this means for Guam and the sihek’s future

The release is part of a larger plan to establish 10 breeding pairs on Palmyra Atoll, using the refuge as a safe intermediate habitat. The longer-term goal is a return to Guam itself — but only once the brown tree snake threat is brought under control. Scientists and wildlife managers are still working on that piece of the puzzle.

For the people of Guam, the sihek carries deep cultural weight. “Our Guam Sihek, a symbol of our island’s beauty, with their cerulean blue and cinnamon coloration mirroring our ocean blue water and red-orange sunsets, have been achieving the seemingly impossible,” said Yolonda Topasna of the Guam Department of Agriculture’s Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources. “Their return to the wild is a testament to our people’s spirit and our commitment to preserving our heritage.”

The Sihek Recovery Program brings together the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Guam Department of Agriculture, the Zoological Society of London, The Nature Conservancy, Sedgwick County Zoo, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. It is one of the more complex multinational conservation partnerships currently operating — and a model for how zoos and governments can collaborate when a species runs out of time.

The sihek is not alone. Several other species once extinct in the wild have been successfully reintroduced, including the red wolf in the southeastern U.S., the Arabian oryx across the Middle East, the California condor in the American West, and Przewalski’s horse across Central Asia. Each recovery required the same ingredients: decades of commitment, international cooperation, and funding that didn’t give up.

An honest look at the risks

Releasing six birds into a new habitat is a beginning, not an ending. Donal Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at the Zoological Society of London, points to the Catarina pupfish as a warning: that small Mexican freshwater fish went extinct in captivity in 2014 C.E. — 20 years after disappearing from the wild — because of poor coordination among caretakers. “By the time people realized there was a crisis,” Smith said, “it was too late to act.”

Small populations face real threats: disease, natural disaster, genetic bottlenecks, and the random chance of producing a generation skewed heavily toward one sex. The sihek’s survival now depends on those six birds thriving, on the captive population staying healthy, and on sustained institutional support for what could be decades more of careful management. The broader extinction crisis that put the sihek in danger has not slowed. Scientists broadly agree we are living through a mass extinction event driven by habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, and climate disruption.

Still, the image of six sihek lifting off into Pacific skies — birds whose grandparents spent their entire lives in a zoo — carries real weight. It is evidence that extinction, even when it seems total, is sometimes not the last word.

As Smith and conservation ecologist Sarah Dalrymple wrote in a joint piece on captive conservation: “Thanks to decades of tireless work saving species, we have the opportunity to reestablish more populations in the wild; it’s imperative that conservation zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens and seed banks are given the financial — and intergovernmental — support to do so.”

The next few months on Palmyra Atoll will tell researchers a great deal about what the sihek can still become. For now, the birds are flying — and that is no small thing.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Mongabay

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