PACIFIC REGION RECOVERY LEADER
Brenda Zaun
Left: Newell's shearwater. Photo by Brenda Zaun
Center: Brenda Zaun and bird release.
Right: Newell's shearwater chick. Photo by Brenda Zaun
Brenda Zaun, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee with the Kauai National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) Complex on Kauai, Hawaii, is dedicated to the conservation and recovery of the threatened Newell’s shearwater (Puffinus auricularis newelli) through her efforts in studying the shearwater’s nesting ecology.
The Newell’s shearwater, or ‘A’o is a seabird belonging to the “Manx-type shearwater” group. It is a subspecies endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, where it is known to nest on Kauai, Molokai, and Hawaii, and possibly Maui, Oahu, and Lehua Islet near Niihau. The shearwater was listed under the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species on September 25, 1975, due to threats from non-native predators, collisions with power lines and other obstacles, habitat degradation and loss by feral ungulates and nonnative plants, attraction to light sources which causes them to expend excessive amounts of energy fluttering around the lights, and a reduction in their prey base.
Brenda has taken the initiative in the development of the research portion of the Newell’s shearwater project and freely shares her findings with other professionals throughout the Pacific. She has worked closely with the privately and state funded Save Our Shearwaters project staff to ensure the staff hired are properly trained and informed on shearwater issues, handling, banding and release techniques. She is considered a leader and an expert in her field on Kauai, Hawaii and the Pacific. She is frequently featured in local newspaper articles about seabirds and Newell’s shearwaters in particular and is consulted often for her thoughts on seabird management in the Islands.
Brenda has worked tirelessly over the past 4 years to discover as much information as possible about the nesting ecology of this relatively unknown species. She spends many nights monitoring, weighing, measuring and caring for the few nesting pairs existing on Kilauea Point NWR. During Newell’s nesting season Brenda averages 12 hour work days and donates many hours of work without compensation or recognition for her efforts.
Brenda has documented previously unknown nesting behavior, chick growth rates, parental feeding strategy, parent to chick vocal exchanges and chick rearing and feeding behavior of the adults. In addition her dedication and long nighttime working hours have resulted in the discovery of 2 additional nesting pairs on Kilauea Point NWR in addition to the 2 known pairs.
Brenda’s work has had an influence on population estimates as it was previously thought that during egg incubation an adult would return to the nest burrow every 7 days and hence 1/7 of the breeding population would be inbound and observed on radar surveys each night. Brenda discovered that the adult return rate was closer to 11 days which when applied to the radar survey data, 1/11 returning nightly, results in a larger nesting adult population estimate. The data Brenda has compiled on Newell’s chick growth, food provisioning and parental care is unequalled and is the first data of this type documented for this species. Brenda has also presented professional programs on the nesting ecology of Newell’s shearwaters at the Pacific Seabird Conference in 2004 and 2006, and the Hawaii Conservation Conference in 2005 and 2006.
The Newell’s shearwater project is a cooperative project with the following organizations: Kauai Electric Cooperative; Hawaii State Department of Land and Natural Resources U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Division of Law Enforcement, Division of Ecological Services, and Division of Refuges; and the private citizens of Kauai.