Mauritius: The Echo of Extinction

KentOnline / KMTV

We tell the story of how genetics and conservation came together to save the Mauritian Echo Parakeet on the island of Mauritius.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:11 The Echo parakeet in Mauritius is the sole survivor of the parrot species

00:25 that were once found in the Mascareen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

00:29 Habitat loss, invasive species, cyclones and infectious disease are just some of the reasons

00:34 the Echo was once named the world's rarest parrot.

00:37 The species has been on a journey of survival and recovery for decades.

00:42 It began with a case trial some 40 years ago which was at the brink of extinction.

00:47 In Mauritius we have lost so many species which were unique to the island.

00:51 The famous Dedu is one example.

00:53 So the government of Mauritius, we started to have collaboration with international partners

00:58 I'm one of those partners and have been researching the conservation genetics behind the survival of the species at DICE,

01:04 the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology which is part of the University of Kent.

01:08 I've been interested in disease and how the Echo parakeets breed with the aim of increasing the population.

01:13 Decades of collaborative conservation and genetics research later,

01:17 there are now around 800 Echoes flourishing across the island.

01:21 But saving the Echo parakeet didn't start with my work, it began a couple of decades earlier

01:26 and Professor Carl Jones was one of the first international researchers to work on the project.

01:31 I came to Mauritius in the late 1970s to work on some of the world's rarest birds.

01:36 The Mauritius kestrel, the Echo parakeet and the pink pigeon.

01:40 We came up here in 1979 going through the forest looking for parakeets and we could only find a handful.

01:48 Restoring a species is something that happens over many many decades.

01:52 We established a population but we also started working with local biologists, training people.

01:59 We established our own organisation, the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.

02:02 We worked with government and helped form the National Parks and Conservation Service.

02:07 That whole journey was not just about restoring the parrot,

02:10 it was about using the parrot to actually develop the conservation movement in Mauritius.

02:16 Fast forward from the 1970s to the early 2000s and we thought that the Echo parakeet was well on the way to recovery.

02:22 But we were wrong.

02:23 In 2005, my first PhD student at Dice, Claire Raisin and I, had started our genetic research

02:28 only to discover that the Echoes were threatened with extinction once again by cytosine beacon feather disease.

02:34 They were already a very inbred species so to then encounter a highly transmissible virus,

02:40 it's not surprising that people felt quite worried about it.

02:44 I think that was at the point when a lot of the intensive conservation management, all of that had to stop overnight, was that right?

02:49 Yeah, exactly.

02:50 First thing we needed to do was to minimise the contact.

02:52 We no longer took any birds from the wild into captivity.

02:55 We stopped all captive breeding and hand rearing.

02:58 We were wearing full, almost like hazmat suits.

03:01 All of our equipment was being disinfected between each site.

03:04 You were the first person to do genetic work on the Echo parakeet.

03:07 I was, yeah.

03:08 We had a couple of hundred blood samples stored away in a freezer.

03:11 One of the first things that I did was to develop a set of genetic markers.

03:14 To know the genealogy and the pedigree of a wild population is so valuable and your work started that process

03:20 so we could then map the offspring to find out how related they were.

03:23 But we can't conduct our research without the field teams who manage the parakeet population and the virus on the ground,

03:29 or more accurately, up in the trees.

03:31 There was two chicks and the female was in the tree opposite to the nest box tree.

03:37 Echoes are really intelligent, so they have their own personalities.

03:42 So having worked with them for a long time, I can tell from their behaviour who they are,

03:48 especially all-emotion, you know, that's like part of our heritage, you know.

03:54 And the ringing is going to let us follow these individuals throughout their life.

03:58 So one, it gives us an idea of how many individuals exist within the population.

04:03 But then two, it allows us to have these life histories.

04:08 The main disease affecting the echoes is the cytosine beacon feather disease.

04:13 It's going to present itself as yellow feathers and if it's a severe infection,

04:17 they're going to lose so many feathers that they won't be able to fly anymore.

04:20 And then if they can't fly, they won't be able to feed and they won't be able to get away from predators and it can be lethal.

04:26 With this data being recorded, we can keep track of how the echoes are breeding and relate this to their genetics.

04:32 We found that, yeah, the population at Bel Arm versus the population here in the Gorges had become genetically distinct.

04:39 Species need to have genetic diversity within their population to allow them to adapt and evolve to future challenges.

04:46 When populations become very, very small and rare, rare alleles in the population are the first alleles to be lost

04:52 through what we call random genetic drift, which is the process where rare alleles are lost just through random chance

04:58 because certain breeding pairs won't breed in a certain season and therefore won't transmit their genes into the next generation.

05:04 Hushna is a scientific officer with the National Parks and Conservation Service

05:08 who works to involve local communities in conservation and raises awareness around the diverse range of species in Mauritius.

05:14 Those ecoparaqui birds, they are surviving very well in the wild and even we have had a reintroduction of birds

05:23 from the founder population, Black River Gorges National Park, to other parts of the island, the Bamboo Mountain Range,

05:30 which is in the eastern part of the island.

05:32 The study of the genetic structure, the genetic viability, the genetic stability of the ecoparaquid birds

05:40 being studied by the University of Kent is of utmost importance if we want to ensure their survivorship.

05:47 Back in the forest, we take blood samples from all of the birds.

05:50 Having access to this allows us to screen for disease and we can also analyse their genetic diversity and levels of inbreeding.

05:57 So that sample gets stored at minus 80 degrees for long-term storage.

06:01 We take the samples back to DICE at the University of Kent, extract the DNA and then we'll sequence the virus.

06:07 So if this individual is actually infected, then we'll isolate DNA of the virus from the blood sample

06:14 and we can sequence the DNA and see what viral genotype or viral haplotype this particular individual has

06:22 and then compare it to all of the other individuals that we know to be infected

06:27 and we can see patterns in how the virus is mutating.

06:30 I then met Professor Kok van Oosterhout from the University of East Anglia.

06:34 We are now working together to sequence the genomes of the ecoparaquids.

06:38 We have now access to data sets that were unthinkable in the past.

06:42 So we can really look not only at genetic variation but also at the mutational load.

06:47 They have come through this bottleneck and then all these mutations, or some of them,

06:51 can become in high frequency in the population and that's unnatural.

06:55 And so the conservation genomic work that we're doing today, which is cutting edge,

06:59 is to try and remove and reduce the frequency of those bad mutations

07:04 to try and return the genetic composition of the population to a state that it was in

07:08 before the population became very, very rare.

07:11 And in some of the parts of the genome you have these ultra-conserved elements

07:15 that are DNA sequences that have not changed for millions and millions of years.

07:19 If there is a mutation or a change in that particular sequence, it's probably going to be deleterious.

07:25 For me, sequencing the whole genomes of these species allows us for the first time

07:29 to try and quantify the effects of these bad mutations

07:33 in something we've never really been able to do before.

07:35 And it's exciting that we can begin to understand what is putting different species at risk.

07:40 And it's also vital to help the eco-population survive on its own.

07:43 The native forest in Mauritius is also crucial.

07:46 It's tall and dense, the perfect place for parakeets to nest and find food,

07:50 but there's only a few percent of it there.

07:52 So around 25% of Mauritius is considered a forest cover.

07:57 Native forest, much of it is degraded by invasive alien species.

08:01 However, not all of it is native forest. Much of it is planted forest.

08:06 These alien species, like invasive guava, pose a real threat to the native forests

08:11 and therefore the eco's too.

08:13 But in the south of Mauritius, Ebony Forest is on a mission to restore the native ecosystem.

08:17 Not only are they replanting trees alongside the work of the National Parks and Conservation Service,

08:22 they're reintroducing parakeets to help disperse seeds, helping the forest grow.

08:27 Using the screening that is done at DICE, we're able to see which pair we can collect from.

08:33 Because at the start we want to bring birds that are going to be healthy,

08:36 because there's going to be a stress being moved from their boxes from the National Park to Ebony Forest.

08:40 They are going to be fed until they fledge and wean.

08:43 And once they can fly well and feed by themselves, then they will be released.

08:47 And we hope they will just set up in the area, start making babies and spreading the seeds around.

08:54 What we're trying to do now is to learn the role that diet plays in the breeding performance and productivity of echid parakeets.

09:02 So as we've seen already, the echid parakeets benefit from supplementary feeding.

09:06 They will lay more eggs and there's a greater chance that their chicks will fledge successfully.

09:10 But we can't do that forever.

09:12 The native forests that are behind me and which are being conserved by all of these organisations collaboratively,

09:18 they are going to be the long-term future for the echid parakeets.

09:21 And so we're using DNA metabar coding. For each individual bird we'll have a menu of what they've eaten.

09:26 We then sequence all of the DNA that's found in the foetal samples of the echid parakeet fledgings

09:31 and we can then relate that information to the extent to which the native habitat is contributing to the fitness of individuals.

09:39 And the future looks bright with collaboration.

09:42 Getting them back to what we have now is some 800 species, which seems to be a huge success,

09:49 because what we are doing at the National Parks is to ensure that this species survives for future generations.

09:56 Restoring the ecosystem which has been degraded for a long time is a long and difficult process.

10:04 That's why we are trying to get the bird to cover the whole island,

10:08 which obviously is going to increase and to help us in keeping this biodiversity.

10:14 With much still to do to maintain the future of this island's ecosystem, we're not stopping at Mauritius.

10:20 I think the echid parakeet is a great symbol for what we should be doing on Mauritius,

10:26 what we can do elsewhere in the world.

10:28 And there are so many parrots out there that are threatened, that are declining,

10:33 and I'd like us to be an example of what can be done through science, through fieldwork, through planning, through vision.

10:43 We are not stopping here. I think we are going to go to Réunion next,

10:47 restoring the birds to a place where they've gone extinct.

10:50 It would be one of the world's first or unique example where we are trying to,

10:56 especially in the south, in the global south, where such types of translocations are being undertaken.

11:02 And we have Mauritius to thank for unlocking new potential.

11:06 Islands have really informed the way we think about the world.

11:10 The first time we realised a species had become extinct was on an island with the dodo.

11:14 We're not trying to turn the clock back and recreate systems as they once were,

11:19 but we're looking forward and thinking, how can we mitigate the effects of climate change?

11:25 How can we actually adapt to a world which is changing very rapidly?

11:30 The answer is the work we're doing here in Mauritius, which can be applied worldwide.

11:35 And now the echoparakeet has become an icon of successful species restoration.

11:40 [Music plays]

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