PO’OULI
The Po’ouli or black-faced honeycreeper was found on the island of Maui. Based on a 2004 news article on NBC News, the species was discovered in 1973 by a group of University of Hawaii students who described the bird as small and brown, with a partial black face akin to a bandit’s mask. They were the only Hawaiian forest birds to have native tree snails as their main source of food -- so unique that they had their own genus.
There were numerous factors that led to the Po’ouli’s extinction, including the introduction of predators such as rats, cats, and mongoose; loss of their habitat due to feral pigs; and the population decline of their main food source, native tree snails, on top of competition with other predators of the snail.
The last Po’ouli in the wild was seen in 2004, while the last one in captivity died in the same year. Eric Vanderwerf of the Fish and Wildlife Service once said, “We’ll never have another one like it if it disappears. I kind of like it in some way to the loss of the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel. If we lost that, we could never get it back.”