On a crisp morning in June, Snowflake spread its wings and let the strong
wind of Guadalupe Island help it take a first flight away from its home.
This wasn’t the first time the young black-footed
albatross had soared above the North Pacific Ocean.
Five months before, as an egg, scientists flew Snowflake 6000 kilometers from Midway Atoll, in Hawaii.
Black-footed albatrosses can spend years without touching land.
But they return every year to mate and nest in the islands where they were born.
Midway Atoll makes up about one-third of the global breeding population alone.
There, they nest on low-lying sandy beaches.
But this makes their eggs and chicks very vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding.
In 2011, a tsunami wiped out about 30,000 of their nests on three atolls.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the black-footed albatross,
as well as their close cousin, the Laysan albatross, as near-threatened.
Since their breeding grounds are in peril, so are their populations.
So, scientists from Mexico at Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas,
and in the U.S. from Pacific Rim Conservation, had the bold idea
to re-establish a population of black-footed albatrosses in a safer location.
Scientists placed 21 eggs in incubators and flew them from Midway to Guadalupe Island.
They traveled four legs on this journey—from private jets to domestic flights on “extra comfort” rows.
The island is a reserve where black-footed albatross and other seabirds once nested.
Feral cats, introduced in the mid-20th century, ended the colony.
But scientists with GECI have been working on the island for the past
20 years to eradicate invasive species.
They’ve made progress, but in the meantime, an excluder fence erected in 2014
keeps the southern part of the island free of threats.
After the long journey, the Midway eggs met their foster parents:
experienced Laysan albatross pairs.
When 18 eggs hatched in February, the new parents fed and cared for their adopted chicks.
Since scientists didn't know how well Laysan parents would raise the imported eggs,
they decided to also try the translocation experiment with chicks.
The team selected black-footed albatross chicks and covered them at night
so they would not “learn” the Hawaiian sky and imprint there.
The scientists repeated the journey across the Pacific in February of 2021.
After transporting the 1-month old chicks to Guadalupe Island, GECI’s team hand-reared them.
The chicks were exposed to decoys and recorded vocalizations of their species.
They monitored the babies daily and fed them until they are ready to fly away; all have done so.
Translocations are not first-line interventions for saving species—but sometimes, they're the only option.
In the past 30 years a variety of animals have been translocated.
The conservation community hopes the experiment with black-footed albatross
breaks ground for other similar projects.
After the success of the Laysan foster parents, the team is planning to bring at least 80 more
black-footed albatross eggs to Guadalupe Island in the next few years.
But they won’t know how well the project will work
until Snowflake and the rest of the first batch return in five years
to start looking for mates.
When they do, the scientists will be waiting with open arms.