Climate change, invasive species and military expansion have formed an unholy trinity that threatens our small but ancient civilization
- Before it is lost is series of essays from the Pacific islands
For about as long as I’ve been alive, there have been no sihek on the island of Guam.
The sihek, or the Guam kingfisher, is a beautiful blue-gold songbird that’s been extirpated in the wild since the 1980s. Like most of Guam’s native birds – 10 out of 12 native species – the sihek rapidly declined after the introduction of the invasive brown tree snake brought to the island after the second world war as a stowaway on military ships.
