Birds are nesting again on Nu'utele after rats and pigs were removed

Forests on Nu'utele Island in Samoa are putting out seedlings, and native birds are nesting, after rats and feral pigs were removed. Good News Network reported the update on October 22, 2026, from an Island Conservation account of the work.

The island is a key biodiversity area, and one of the country's more intact native forests. Pigs had been turning the soil so plants could not get established, and rats take eggs and chicks. Samoa's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Pacific Regional Invasive Species Management Support Service, landowners, and people from nearby Aleipata did the removal with Island Conservation and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. Between March 2025 and May 2026, teams made 12 expeditions and spent more than 130 days on the island's rough ground.

Paul Jacques, project manager for Island Conservation, said native seedlings were carpeting the floor, including knee-high seedlings where the forest had not been regenerating, and that people can now grow and harvest giant taro where crops had failed. A month after the animals were gone, researchers found several shy ground dove nests with eggs in bird's-nest ferns. Nu'utele holds the largest remaining population of that dove in Samoa. They also recorded a nest of the Samoan starling and breeding by the flycatcher and the whistler. A land crab not previously recorded on the island was found as well.

A translocation of the threatened mao, a Samoan forest bird, is planned as part of a 2032 target. That move has not happened. David Moverley of SPREP said the island shows forests, wildlife, and food plants responding when communities and agencies work from the same plan. Monitoring is continuing. The nests and seedlings are early signs, not a finished recovery.