In Hakalau, a Modern Success Story Tuesday, May 29 Pelican Island, Fla., is a long way from the Big Island of Hawaii, but human vanity, high fashion and bird feathers feature prominently in the history of both. Teddy Roosevelt created the first national wildlife refuge at Pelican Island in 1903, after years of unrestricted plume hunting of egrets to ornament ladies" hats nearly led to their extinction. The Polynesians who colonized Hawaii centuries ago shared a similar love of feathers as adornment, and the ruling class, or ali'i, wore cloaks made from tens of thousands of honeycreeper feathers. It is difficult to know what role this practice had in the decline and extinction of birds before European contact with Hawaii. What we do know is that for those bird species that have survived into the 21st century, Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge is both their final redoubt and a laboratory for the audacious possibility of recovery. So this morning, Eben Paxton, biologist with the United States Geological Survey Pacific Island Ecosystem Research Center; Jessie Knowlton, a postdoctoral researcher; and I rumble among saffron-colored cinder cones up the steep slopes of Mauna Kea volcano. We have the good fortune to be visiting a small corner of this modern success story in Hawaiian bird conservation. Hakalau was created in 1985 after surveys revealed an extraordinary diversity of native and endangered birds in this remnant forest. Somehow Hakalau survived as many lowland Hawaiian forests were converted to agriculture by ancient Hawaiians, a process that accelerated after modern Euro-Americans arrived. We drive through Hawaiian Home Lands to reach the high elevation in Hakalau. For 30 minutes, we pass through zones overrun with the aggressive and invasive European shrub gorse (Ulex europaea). Turkeys, francolins, California quail, pigs and even feral cows wander across our path as we near the refuge. Entering the refuge on foot, we pass widely scattered native ohia and koa trees. Some are 15 feet tall, the products of an ambitious forest restoration campaign; others are 70-foot-tall giants left over from the vast forest that once covered this area. Immediately, we hear the songs of native apapane, amakihi and i'iwi. Then, not five minutes after we reach the entrance, Eben points out a bird foraging at eye level just 12 feet away: an akepa! This small, endangered orange honeycreeper has appeared before we could even begin searching for it. It is a "life bird" for me, meaning it is the first one I have ever seen. Still absorbing this thrill, Eben points out a Hawaii creeper, another endangered species that gleans insects from the bark of trees like a nuthatch. Over the next four hours, we see five more akepas and all of the more common native birds. The "akiapola'au is also relatively common in Hakalau, although we don't see one on this morning. Woodpeckers never reached Hawaii, and the aki, as it is known, evolved to fill the wood-boring niche. It uses its stout lower mandible to dig into tree bark and its long, curved upper bill to extract insects. Birds are not the only endangered species in Hawaii. We sit down for lunch near a rare endemic plant, a six-foot-tall lobelia that is in bloom. Over evolutionary time, particular Hawaiian bird species became more efficient plant pollinators, reaching their bills into the curved flowers to drink the sweet nectar. Birds with slightly longer bills could reach the nectar more efficiently and thus had a selective advantage over others. Similarly, flowers whose shape more closely matched the curve of their more efficient pollinating birds produced more offspring. This co-evolutionary dance between the honeycreepers and lobelias is partly what produced the remarkable biodiversity of Hawaii. Finishing our sandwiches, we notice that pigs have chewed off some of the lobelia's lower branches. Then, suddenly, a Hawaii amakihi flies down and, inserting his curved bill into the curved corolla of the flower, recapitulates his argument for co-evolution between plant and pollinator. Two simple features explain the remarkable diversity and density of endemic birds at Hakalau: Most of the refuge is above the mosquito-borne malaria zone, and the forest is composed of native trees of many ages. Indeed, large-scale plantings of koa in the 1990s have already been colonized by native birds, suggesting that such an approach could greatly expand available habitat - and thus population size - of many rare and endangered Hawaiian birds. This could accomplish more than simply slowing population declines. Forest restoration of the kind at Hakalau on a large enough scale could be a game changer for Hawaiian forest birds. Endangered species conservation at times resembles a protracted chronic disease, like a malarial fever that haunts the infected patient with cyclic bouts of acute symptoms that can never be fully cured. Hawaiian forest bird conservation sometimes feels this way. Although the koa planting experiments at Hakalau are continuing, they and other restoration work on the Big Island offer a vision for the future of Hawaii's remarkable birds that is both practical and inspiring. If, 500 years from now, this remote archipelago is still graced by the songs and brilliant colors of its native birds and the ecosystems that support them, it will be this kind of bold action that our descendents will thank us for.