The Mariana Crow, which can only be found on Rota, is on the path to being delisted as an endangered species.

“We’ve seen incredible results from this rear and release program that began in 2015,” said Sarah Faegre, the Primary Investigator of UW Mariana Crow Recovery Project.  

There are a total of 71 adult pairs of the Mariana Crow. Faegre said there were just 46 pairs when she arrived on Rota in 2009.

“They can breed nearly year-round and most of their nests in the wild fail, but they're-nest over and over again. So this gives us an opportunity to collect eggs or small nestlings from wild nests take those into captivity, and rear them by hand and the wild pairs that we collect these young from will then lay new eggs, create new young, and by the end of the season the pairs that we collected from have the same reproductive rates. So every bird that we raise in captivity is essentially a bonus, an extra bird that the population would not otherwise have,” said Faegre. 

They continue to study what exactly is threatening the bird’s population now.

“What we now so far is basically that there is something in the environment that is causing an extreme immune response in these birds...and it is creating so much inflammation in their bodies that it actually kills them…we know it is in the environment because when we bring these birds into captivity and raise them in captivity on Rota, they do not die,” she added. 

The Mariana Crow has been listed as an endangered species since 1984. 

It could be delisted once there are 75 breeding pairs on Rota and one other location, likely Guam or the Northern Islands. 

The full interview on Friday’s episode of CNMI weekly.