Wildland Fire Danger Elevated in Hawaii with Drought in Forecast

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In the 2017 mountain -wide survey, no palila were detected along the southeast and eastern slopes of Mauna Kea, where they have been detected historically. There were two detections on the north slope of Mauna Kea where wild birds were translocated (1997-1998, 2004-2006) and captive -reared birds were released (2003-2005, 2009; Banko and Farmer 2014). This area is adjacent to and upslope of the Pu'u Mali mitigation area where former pasture land has been taken out of grazing and reforestation of native trees has begun. There were also pallia detected below the core area on the southwest slope (lower stations on transects 124 and 125), another area where former pasture lands are subject to a re- forestation project. Despite these hopeful signs that reforestation has begun to rehabilitate former pasture land into palila habitat, palila range has been relatively constant across the annual surveys and is only about 5% of its historical extent (Figure 1 inset; Banko et al. 2013). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Funding for annual paliia surveys since 1998 was provided by Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Army Garrison Hawai'i, Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, American Bird Conservancy, and the U.S. Geological Survey Wildlife Program. Funding for analyses of the data since 2012 was provided by the Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife. We are grateful to the many agency staff and volunteers who helped collect survey data and to C. Farmer and S. Hess for reviews of an early draft. Editorial assistance was provided by 1. Rowe. 15