The influence of feeding station location on the space use and behavior of reintroduced 'alal: Causes and consequences

Supplemental feeding is a common soft-release strategy for increasing settlement, survival, and breeding in animals after translocation. However, supplemental feeding can also hinder natural patterns of dispersal or influence social interactions. Some drawbacks of feeding can be mitigated if feeding stations can function as management tools for directing animals' movement, for example, by guiding them toward wild food resources or prospective territories while directing them away from potential threats, for example, predator hotspots or urban/agricultural centers. However, these effects may not work equally across individuals or habitat types. For species such as 'alala (Corvus hawaiiensis), Hawaii's last living corvid, being able to manipulate space use via supplemental feeders could improve reintroduction outcomes. We determined if and how feeding stations influence a released population of 'alala by strategically moving feeders across varying distances and habitat types, while measuring how quickly birds discovered new feeders and how their space use changed. We found that 'alala discovered feeders more rapidly in closed as opposed to open canopy habitat, and feeder movement influenced how far 'alala ranged, especially in afternoon periods. Sex, social network position, and individual home range size did not predict feeder discovery. These insights offer lessons for using supplemental feeding when managing reintroductions. We explore whether moving supplemental feeding stations influence the space use of recently released 'alala, the endangered Hawaiian crow. We found that birds were more likely to range farther away from the release site as feeders moved, and that the amount of canopy cover around feeder sites influenced how quickly new sites were used. Together our results allow for crafting guidance on how to trigger greater habitat exploration after a conservation translocation, which may have downstream consequences for managing post-release outcomes in animals.image