![\"Five](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Lede_AchatinellaFulgens.0.jpg\")
Our planet faces a mass extinction. I visited ground zero.<\/p>\n
PEARL CITY, Oahu \u2014 On a warm November afternoon in a trailer not far from Pearl Harbor, a scientist named David Sischo popped open the lid to a small plastic tank. From a jumble of leaves, he pulled out something precious.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would argue that they\u2019re one of the rarest animals on Earth,\u201d Sischo said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Achatinella_ALT2.jpg\")
In his hands were several cream-colored snails. They had thin brown bands circling their shells, like swirls of caramel in a small scoop of ice cream. <\/p>\n
The snails were asleep and tucked into their shells as Sischo placed them on a petri dish (snails are nocturnal). But after a few minutes, their antennae popped out, their gooey feet emerged, and they started to move. Slowly.<\/p>\n
These snails, a species called Achatinella fulgens, are one <\/strong>step away from extinction. They only exist in this room, a lab that\u2019s part of the state\u2019s Snail Extinction Prevention Program (SEPP). Funded in part by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), it\u2019s a modern-day Noah\u2019s ark, home to roughly 40 species of snails that are either extinct in the wild or about to be.<\/p>\n In recent decades, hundreds of species of snails<\/a> have gone extinct across the Hawaiian Islands, said Sischo, a state biologist who runs SEPP. Another hundred are now at risk of blinking out. These animals may lack charisma by some definitions, but they are revered in native Hawaiian culture and linchpins in their ecosystems. They recycle nutrients, helping fertilize the forest, a source of water for the island. <\/p>\n \u201cIf we lose snails, we\u2019re probably screwed,\u201d said Ken Hayes, a snail researcher at Bishop Museum, a natural and cultural history museum in Honolulu. <\/p>\n This fight for survival is not unique to snails. <\/p>\n Scores of native Hawaiian species have been disappearing in recent decades, including many plants, birds, and insects. In October, the US Fish and Wildlife Service formally declared<\/a> 21 species extinct nationwide. Eight of them were Hawaiian birds. There is an extinction crisis playing out worldwide \u2014 where as many as 1 million species<\/a> are creeping toward the edge of existence \u2014 but the state of Hawaii is ground zero. It has lost more species than any other state<\/a>, which is one reason why it\u2019s been dubbed the extinction capital of the world.<\/p>\n Snails and birds in Hawaii, and imperiled species across the nation, are not without a lifeline. Many of them \u2014 including Achatinella fulgens \u2014 are classified as federally threatened or endangered. That means they\u2019re protected under the Endangered Species Act, a federal law that grants them the highest level of protection afforded to wildlife in the US. There are some 1,670 species <\/strong>and subspecies <\/strong>protected by the Act, according to a Vox analysis of federal data (the number includes some populations within species). Nearly a third of them are found in Hawaii. <\/p>\n Now on the cusp of its 50th year, the Act is widely considered to be the nation\u2019s strongest environmental law. Yet many of the species it aims to protect, and the ecosystems they call home, are struggling to hold on. The law faces more complex challenges today than it did when Congress<\/a> passed it in 1973, including the threat of climate change<\/a>. This raises the question: Is it still up for the job? <\/p>\n There\u2019s no better place to explore this question than in Hawaii. <\/p>\n Those snails in Sischo\u2019s lab <\/strong>were once so common on Oahu that Native Hawaiians would use them to make leis, traditional garlands that symbolize love and respect. But by 2012, when Sischo started working for the state, researchers could find just one population in the wild. A couple dozen or so of the snails were glued to the leaves of guava trees in a ravine just uphill from the popular beaches of Honolulu. <\/p>\n Their future darkened from here. A landslide in the mountains knocked a number of snail-bearing trees down into the ravine. And in the aftermath, Sischo\u2019s team could find only six snails left. They eventually brought those snails into captivity and grew the population to 50 before a pathogen swept through the lab, collapsing it down to fewer than 10. \u201cIt was a nightmare,\u201d Sischo told me.<\/p>\n Today, the captive population of Achatinella fulgens is back up to roughly 60, hanging on in a purgatory-like existence. Sischo keeps the adults in separate tanks so they can\u2019t spread disease to each other. \u201cWe\u2019ll keep them in solitary confinement, and then they\u2019ll get conjugal visits periodically,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Endangered Species Act is a complex law but its goal is simple: to restore populations of imperiled plants and animals, and the ecosystems they rely on, so that they don\u2019t go extinct. Among other provisions, the law makes it a federal crime to harm species that are classified as endangered, meaning they\u2019re at risk of extinction, with a few exceptions. It also funds projects to conserve those endangered species, such as Sischo\u2019s work to save Achatinella fulgens. <\/p>\n If you look at the Endangered Species Act narrowly \u2014 as a means to prevent extinction of some of the nation\u2019s rarest species \u2014 it\u2019s a powerful law. More than 99 percent of plants and animals on the federal endangered species list are still on this planet. <\/p>\n Top left: An endangered Hawaiian monk seal snoozing on the beach on the north shore of Kauai. Top right: Green sea turtles, a federally threatened species, on a beach in Kauai, where they come ashore \u2014 often by the dozens \u2014 to rest. Bottom left: A short-finned pilot whale, off the coast of Hawaii (photo taken under the authority of NMFS MMPA\/ESA Permit No. 26596). Bottom right: Red-footed boobies in K\u012blauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yet the Act is no match for the collapse of ecosystems at large or the growing threats that shrink populations in the first place. Climate change is altering habitats and has helped spread invasive species. Cities have swelled, as has plastic pollution. Scientists have documented widespread losses within groups of animals like birds<\/a> and bumblebees<\/a>. More than 40 percent of ecosystems in the US are now at risk of \u201crange-wide collapse<\/a>.\u201d The Act is helping a subset of species hang on, while the rest of nature is in decline. <\/p>\n These declines are especially extreme in Hawaii. <\/p>\n For millions of years, plants, birds, and other creatures evolved in isolation on the Hawaiian islands, in the absence of certain predators and parasites. There were no mosquitos, no grazers. Plants didn\u2019t need to defend themselves, so they mostly lack thorns or spines; a mint plant in Hawaii produces no mint flavor\u2014 a \u201cmintless\u201d mint \u2014 because it doesn\u2019t have the chemical that such plants use to repel herbivores. <\/p>\n Then settlers arrived \u2014 first the Polynesians and then, starting in the late 1700s, the Europeans. People, and especially Europeans, brought with them a hodgepodge of foreign plants and animals, such as pigs, cats, and rats, against which native species were largely defenseless. <\/p>\n For Achatinella fulgens, a major problem was the cannibalistic rosy wolfsnail. The state first introduced the mollusk to the <\/strong>islands in the 1950s as a means to get rid of yet another nonnative snail. The wolfsnail is a skilled predator that hunts its native cousins by tracking their trails of slime.<\/p>\n Climate change has only given animals here more to contend with. <\/p>\n Rising temperatures are helping spread certain invasive species uphill, including mosquitos that kill birds and perhaps even the wolfsnail. Heat is also damaging coral reefs<\/a>. Sea level rise, meanwhile, is shrinking coastal habitats<\/a> where seals, turtles, and other animals nest. It\u2019s mucking everything up. <\/p>\n In some ways, the geography and history of Hawaii make the state uniquely vulnerable to environmental threats. Yet the problems it faces are increasingly universal, providing a glimpse into what the future on Earth might look like if environmental policy fails to adequately address them.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I always like to say is that Hawaii is a mesocosm of what\u2019s happening in the world,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cIf we can understand what\u2019s happening in this isolated environment, and we can find some solutions here, those same solutions will work in New York. We can make life better for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n One sunny morning last month, <\/strong>on a grassy hillside in northern Kauai, Lauren Pederson knelt next to a hole in the ground. It looked like a small chimney. Pederson, a conservation technician at an environmental group called Pacific Rim Conservation, removed a container covering the top so I could peer inside. I saw feathers in shades of gray. A black beak. Lots of fluff. <\/p>\n The hole was an artificial burrow home to a young seabird. The bird, known as an ua\u2018u, or Hawaiian petrel, possessed the awkward look of an adolescent. It was nearly ready to fledge, Pederson said. Once they leave the nest, ua\u2018u spend several years at sea before returning to shore to nest.<\/p>\n Ua\u2018u were once super-abundant in Hawaii, like, say, pigeons in New York. Their wings darkened the skies and their guano fertilized the soil, helping give rise to the state\u2019s lush rainforests. As hotels and power lines shot up and predators moved in, however, seabird populations began to crash. In 1967, following fears that ua\u2018u might go extinct, these birds became one of the nation\u2019s first species to be classified as endangered and granted federal protection (under a predecessor of the Endangered Species Act, called the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966). That designation means that the species is in danger of going extinct across at least a large portion of its range.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no question that the Act has helped ua\u2018u in the decades since. In the aughts, a luxury hotel on Kauai\u2019s north shore was harming endangered seabirds, according to<\/a> environmental advocates. When young birds like ua\u2018u fly out to sea for the first time, they navigate by the moon and stars. The hotel\u2019s bright lights were disorienting them, causing the birds to fly toward land and, in some cases, fall out of the sky from exhaustion. An environmental group called Earthjustice sued the hotel, alleging that it was violating the ESA. The hotel ultimately settled the suit<\/a> and agreed to reduce light pollution and fund seabird conservation. <\/p>\n Funding from this settlement, among other sources, helped establish a colony of ua\u2018u and a\u2018o \u2014 another seabird, known as the Newell\u2019s shearwater, which is federally threatened \u2014 in K\u012blauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. That\u2019s where I saw the fluffy fledgling that morning in November. Part of the refuge was fenced in and cleared of predators. Dozens of artificial burrows were installed. And then, beginning in 2015, a number of ua\u2018u and a\u2018o were brought here from other colonies on the island \u2014 including the parents of the chick I saw. The colony is small, but birds are coming back to raise their families.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to use the law to force people who are harming these birds to invest in projects to protect their nesting colonies,\u201d said David Henkin, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, who\u2019s based in Honolulu. \u201c[The ESA] is a heavy hammer that can get some good things done.\u201d<\/p>\n ESA lawsuits, or the threat of them, have helped fund a range of conservation efforts across the islands. To offset harm that power lines in Kauai cause endangered seabirds, for example, the local electric utility in Kauai puts money toward a number of projects including an avian rehab center called Save Our Shearwaters. The center provides health care for native seabirds like ua\u2018u and a\u2018o that sometimes run into power lines.<\/p>\n The next day, at a quiet beach on the east shore of Kauai, I met the center\u2019s rehab manager, Jacqueline Nelson, <\/strong>who had some blue boxes with her. Nelson opened one and, using a towel, pulled out a bird with a black coat and white underbelly. It was a young a\u2018o that had come into the facility the day before with dirty plumage, a sign that it had fallen to the ground. <\/p>\n The bird was now clean and ready to try flying again. Nelson delicately placed it on top of a boulder. The a\u2018o sat there for a minute and looked around, seemingly confused by what it should do next. But then it stretched out its wings and oriented itself toward the ocean \u2014 and jumped.<\/p>\n The Endangered Species Act has, in a literal sense, given these birds flight. The number of a\u2018o and ua\u2018u appears to be stabilizing \u2014 albeit at a low number \u2014 according to Andr\u00e9 Raine, a seabird expert and science director at the ecological consulting firm Archipelago Research and Conservation. \u201cThings are looking better for them now, but it is literally only because the funding is available to protect them,\u201d said Raine, who\u2019s also involved in seabird conservation funded in part by the electric utility. <\/p>\n And to be clear: There are plenty of examples of the Act helping conserve plants and animals in Hawaii and across the country. When I visited the islands in November, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and threatened green sea turtles were abundant enough that I would stumble upon them on the beach. Both species, thanks to work funded by the ESA, <\/strong>have shown signs of recovery<\/a> in recent years<\/a>. To date, the Act has restored populations of more than 60 species in the US to the point where they no longer need federal protection. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m absolutely certain of is that if this country did not have an Endangered Species Act, hundreds of the species that exist today would not be here,\u201d said Jamie Rappaport Clark, former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the Act, and CEO of the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. <\/p>\n I am not a birder. <\/strong>I am also partially colorblind. This made the task before me one morning last month particularly challenging: searching for some of Kauai\u2019s rarest forest birds. <\/p>\n The mountains of Kauai were once teaming with native birds that filled the forest with sound and color. Hikers could hear the calls of the Kauai \u2018akialoa and the nuku pu\u2018u, olivine birds with long, curved bills. They might glimpse the Kauai \u2018\u014d\u2018\u014d, a small black bird with yellow patches on its legs, or the brown and gray k\u0101ma\u2018o, which was known to sing loudly as it shot up through the trees before dropping down below the canopy. <\/p>\n All of these forest birds, among many others, are now extinct. <\/p>\n Like many of the state\u2019s snails, forest birds here have been utterly ravaged by nonnative species. Not only do rats and cats eat their chicks and steal their eggs, but a bite from a nonnative mosquito can infect them with avian malaria, and it\u2019s often fatal. Since the late 1700s, when European colonization began, nearly half<\/a> of the state\u2019s 73 native bird species and subspecies found nowhere else on the planet have disappeared. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have a relationship to these birds,\u201d said Sabra Kauka, who teaches Hawaiian studies and Hula at a school in Kauai. \u201cTo see them disappear is like watching a relative pass. It makes me cry,\u201d said Kauka, who also works with the state department of education. <\/p>\n In more recent decades, rising temperatures have helped spread malaria-ridden mosquitoes to higher elevations. Regions that were once too cold for these bloodsuckers \u2014 and thus safe havens for birds \u2014 have been warming up, putting the forest\u2019s remaining native species at an even greater risk <\/strong>as more mosquitos move in. <\/p>\n Avian species in a group called honeycreepers are especially vulnerable to malaria, including the federally endangered \u2018akikiki, a small bird with gray and white plumage. There are fewer than a dozen of them left in the wild, according to Lisa (\u201cCali\u201d) Crampton, an avian ecologist who leads the Kauai Forest Birds Recovery Project (KFBRP). <\/p>\n \u201cWe believe that most of the \u2018akikiki have died,\u201d Crampton said. \u201cThey are functionally extinct in the wild,\u201d she added, meaning there are fewer than 10 breeding females. Other native species like the \u2018akeke\u2018e, puaiohi, and \u2018anianiau \u2014 some of which are listed as federally endangered \u2014 are also now rare in Kauai and at risk of vanishing.<\/p>\n Still, on that morning last month, I hoped I might find one. Or more realistically, I hoped my hiking companion would find one for me.<\/p>\n It was overcast, and I was on a trail in central Kauai with Dylan Blanchard, another conservation technician at Pacific Rim Conservation. The forest was like something out of a fairy tale. Fluffy patches of green moss dotted the floor. Each tree was a world, their branches covered in a potpourri of lichens, mosses, and plants. <\/p>\n Yet for all the magic here, there was a noticeable void. It was quiet. Every now and then Blanchard would take a speaker out of his backpack and play the calls of native birds. They wouldn\u2019t call back. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of sad,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is what it\u2019ll eventually be: playing calls for birds that are nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Funded in part by the Endangered Species Act, KFBRP focuses on two main approaches: breeding birds in captivity to ensure there\u2019s a backup population should the wild one go extinct, and reducing the number of mosquitos that carry avian malaria.<\/p>\n The latter approach relies on a fascinating bit of biology. Most mosquitos and many other insects naturally carry a kind of bacteria called Wolbachia in their cells. Two mosquitos can only successfully breed with each other, however, if they carry the same strain of that bacteria. In Kauai, the plan is to release hundreds of thousands of male mosquitoes that are inoculated with a different strain of Wolbachia than the insects on the island (similar work is underway in Maui). If successful, the invasive mosquito population should crash. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of our last hope,\u201d said Bryn Webber, who leads KFBRP\u2019s mosquito control work. \u201cIf we don\u2019t do this, we\u2019re going to see the birds go extinct in front of our very eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n Raising birds in captivity and controlling mosquitos will undoubtedly help the island\u2019s imperiled birds hold on; it will help stave off extinction, the worst-case scenario. Yet it\u2019s hard to see efforts like this as sustainable, as anything more than a lifeboat. Mosquito control is incredibly costly. Plus, malaria is just one of many threats facing the \u2018akikiki and the other endangered forest birds. Releasing captive-bred birds can also fail<\/a>. <\/p>\n Many of the efforts to save snails like Achatinella fulgens seem similarly narrow. Although they buy time, they typically don\u2019t aim <\/strong>to heal the ecosystem that put these species at risk in the first place. <\/p>\n Beyond breeding snails, the state and other environmental workers have built a dozen \u201csnail jails\u201d in the forest: enclosures, about the size of a basketball court, designed to prevent invasive species from getting in. The perimeter is lined with low-voltage electrified wires that will shock rosy wolfsnails if they get too close.<\/p>\n These enclosures have helped, Sischo said, but they\u2019re not enough to stop the precipitous decline of snails statewide. They do little to help free-roaming species, for example, or address the more intractable impacts of climate change, which is drying up<\/a> the islands.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like right now we\u2019re just putting Band-Aids on things,\u201d Sischo said. \u201cThe US Fish and Wildlife Service talks about recovery as a goal for listed species. That\u2019s not one of our goals. Our main goal is to keep them on earth. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n By focusing on last-ditch efforts to save a finite number of species, the Endangered Species Act runs the risk of missing the bigger picture, of failing to understand and address the widespread unraveling of ecosystems that\u2019s pushing countless plants and animals \u2014 federally protected or not \u2014 closer to the edge. <\/p>\n You can think of the endangered species list as the ICU at a hospital, said Allen Allison, a zoologist at the Bishop Museum. \u201cWhile you\u2019re concentrating on [those patients], the next tranche is headed toward the abyss,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd like in the ICU, you\u2019re not always successful.\u201d<\/p>\n A few hours into our hike in Kauai, Blanchard and I stopped for lunch in a flat grove of \u2018\u014chi\u2018a trees. It was here, he said, that he had seen an \u2018akikiki several months ago. <\/p>\n I sat on the damp forest floor and craned my head toward the canopy. Then I heard a sound that jolted me to my feet \u2014 a shrill cheep <\/em>that <\/em>sounded like the \u2018akikiki recordings I had been listening to. We scanned the forest branches as the bird continued to call. <\/p>\n Then Blanchard spotted it \u2014 not an \u2018akikiki but another imperiled honeycreeper found only in Kauai called the anianiau. Through binoculars, I saw the bird, a small patch of yellow peeking through the canopy. Anianiau are not federally protected under the Endangered Species Act, but, said Crampton, they too appear to be crashing. <\/p>\n None of the 20-plus experts <\/strong>I spoke to for this story want to throw out the Endangered Species Act. But it could be a lot better, they said. <\/p>\n At a minimum, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the federal agency that oversees the majority of listed species, needs a lot more money to do its job. \u201cCurrently, the Service only receives around 50 percent of the funding required to properly implement the Act,\u201d more than 120 conservation groups wrote in a letter<\/a> to Congress in March. \u201cConserving our planet\u2019s natural heritage is a monumental challenge, but we can do more.\u201d<\/p>\n A bigger budget could help FWS classify additional species as threatened or endangered \u2014 i.e., build more lifeboats \u2014 and do so more quickly. It could also mean more money to help populations recover, some of which is funneled into efforts like KFBRP and SEPP. <\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to overstate the impact that more funding would have on these projects. <\/p>\n \u201cFor several millions of dollars, you could secure a lot of species\u2019 existence,\u201d said Sischo. The project needs more staff and some one-time infusions of cash to build more snail jails, he said. The 2023 budget for the Department of Defense was more than $800 bill<\/a>ion<\/a>. A tiny fraction of that \u2014 less than .01 percent \u2014 could likely prevent the extinction of some of Sischo\u2019s snails, which would in turn bolster ecosystems and the resource security they provide. <\/p>\n FWS acknowledges these funding shortfalls. \u201cThe Act continues to be one of our most effective tools,\u201d said Gary Frazer, assistant director for ecological services at FWS, which administers the ESA. But \u201cit is certainly under-resourced,\u201d he added, a point he says the Service has made clear in its budget request<\/a>. (The Fish and Wildlife Service actually requests a cap from Congress on spending to classify species as endangered as the list grows faster than the agency is able to keep up.)<\/p>\n With little money to spend on a growing number of imperiled species, scientists and officials supported by the ESA are forced to triage. In the rush to save ailing life, they channel time and money toward essential actions to stop imminent extinctions instead of addressing more fundamental threats.<\/p>\n More troubling is that many of these threats are getting worse. In 1973, when Congress passed the ESA, \u201cnobody said the words climate change,\u201d Clark, the former FWS director, told me. Now, rising temperatures are escalating the risks to animals like corals and snails, \u201cputting enormous pressure\u201d on the law, Clark said. It\u2019s becoming hard to imagine the ESA achieving its main goal \u2014 conserving vulnerable species \u2014 without also addressing climate change and other, more fundamental problems that are causing ecosystems to collapse. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/01_PartulinaPerdix1.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/01_PrettyUnknownSnail.jpg\")
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/02_lighthouse.jpg\")
\n![\"](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/03_Native_hawaiian_snail_shells.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/04_Monk_seal.jpg\")
\n <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n![\"People](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/04_evening_turtles.jpg\")
\n <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/2023NOV13_BSJ_BSJ_1978__1__ALT.jpg\")
\n <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Red_footed_booby.jpg\")
\n <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/05_Feral_cat.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/05_feral_cat_3_but_better.jpg\")
\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/06_3_a_o_in_the_burrow_6.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/07_ALT_predator_fence_1.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/08_A_o_in_water.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/09_a_o_getting_ready_to_take_off.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/09_alt_A_o_release.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/10_nene_15.jpg\")
\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/11_elepaio_good_shot.jpg\")
![\"Small](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/12_akikiki_3__1_.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/13_snail_through_light_magnifier_3.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/allen_with_anianiau.jpg\")
\n![\"](\"https:\/\/codez.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/kilaeua_refuge_with_fence.jpg\")