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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY . Vo/. 123, No. 4. December 2011 
Ripley (1977) noted Musson’s surmise that the 
rail had disappeared during the Japanese occupa¬ 
tion but did not ascribe a direct cause. Later. 
Ripley and Bcchler (1985:8) quote a correspon¬ 
dent as noting 'that during World War II rats 
were very common on Wake Island, and certainly 
were, in pan, responsible for the demise of this 
rail/’ Their informant was R. R. Delarevelle (4 
Apr 1979, Smithsonian Institution Archives. 
Record Unit 613. Box 502), who hud been a pilot 
with Pan Am beginning in 1947, and would not 
have had any personal experience on Wake Island 
“during” the war. 
Fuller (1987, 2001) attributed extinction to 
starving Japanese troops and does not mention 
rats. Spennemann (2006) erroneously attributed 
the extinction of the Wake Island Rail to a 
combination ol the effects of Japanese feather 
poachers as well as the destruction and predation 
that took place during WW II. The feather 
poachers, however, cannot be invoked because 
the rail would have had no value in the plume 
trade and the feather poachers had left long before 
the Tanager Expedition arrived in 1923 when the 
rails were common (Olson 1996). Wc concur with 
Livezey’s (2003:34) assessment that the species is 
now gone because of one of “the most direct and 
intense human exterminations suffered by an 
avian species during modem times.” Livezey 
(2003:34) cites Blackman (1945) and Munro 
(1946) as the basis for the statement that “not a 
single record of a living specimen was made after 
the occupation of the island by poorly provisioned 
Japanese soldiers,” but neither of those references 
mention anything whatever about Wake Island or 
its rail. Regardless, all available evidence points 
to humans, not rats, as having caused the 
extinction of the Wake Island Rail. 
original ecology of Wake Atoll may eventually be 
restored. It would be tempting to suggest that 
some other species of rail might be introduced to 
Wake, as has been suggested for other locales 
(Olson 1999b, Lazell 2002. Steadman 2006). Yet 
we may question how much time Wake Atoll may 
have left to exist as a habitat for any terrestrial 
organisms. The Wake Island Rail, like the polar 
bear (Ursus maritimus), evolved during the last 
glacial interval and had never experienced a 
maximal interglacial rise in sea level such as 
occurred three times previously in the past 
400.000 years (Olson ct al. 2006). Sea level at 
those times was well above that of the present and 
Wake Atoll would have existed only as habitat for 
marine life. The human conservation ethic, so 
long in development and yet so far from effective 
implementation, must accommodate the reality 
that species have lives just as do individuals. 
Rapidly evolving species that have no refuge from 
the effects of Earth’s climatic cycles and catas¬ 
trophes will necessarily have shorter life spans 
than others. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
EPILOGUE 
Its abundance, confiding nature, and accessi¬ 
bility would have made the Wake Island Rail 
ideal for in-depth studies of the ecology, behavior, 
and physiology of a small flightless rail, most 
species of which arc now also extinct. Its 
apparently communal breeding behavior and 
prolonged postnatal care would have made it a 
particularly engaging subject for research. Now 
some 70 years after the event, we can only lament 
the opportunity that was lost with its extinction. 
ishnd h rp CaIS haV ‘ ng been elirninaled from the 
Staid (Rauzon e, al. 2008a) and eradication of 
rodents planned for 2012, some semblance of the 
Louis Hitchcock, unofficial historian of Wake Island, 
was immensely helpful in proriding information and 
references concerning the history of Wake and its fauna. 
Wc are extremely grateful to the following persons and 
institutions for access to, or information from, specimens: 
Mary LeCroy. Paul Sweet, and Peter Capainolo. American 
Museum of Natural History (AMNH). New York: Academv 
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). Pennsylvania; 
Carla Kishinami and Lydia Gtiretano. Bernice P. Bishop 
Museum (BBM). Honolulu. Hawaii; Barbara Stein and 
Karen Klitz, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), 
Berkeley. (alifumia; Museum of Comparative Zoology 
(MCZ). Harvard University. Cambridge. Massachusetts; 
Jon C. Barlow. Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Toronto. 
Ontario: and James Dean and Craig Ludwig, National 
Museum of Natural History lUSNM). Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion. Washington, DC. Steven J. Pam provided the 
statistical analyses and the material for Figures 6 and 7. 
Historic photographs of Wake Island Rails were generously 
donated by Tada Lyons Darsje, daughter of Torrey Lyons: 
Hawaii State Archives, Honolulu: and the archives of MVZ. 
For archival and bibliographical assistance we are exateful 
to Ellen Alcrs and Tammy Peters. Smithsonian Institution 
Archives. Richard C. Banks and Roger B. Clapp. L'.S. 
Geological Survey, and Daria Wingreen-Mason and her 
colleagues. Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Our efforts 
have been greatly furthered by the expertise of Julian Hume 
in rendering the Frontispiece and Figure 8. We thank Brian 
K. Schmidt lor assistance with composing or enhancing 
most of the figures and for other assistance with the 
manuscript we thank Johanna R. Humphrey. We thank 
Bruce Beehler and David W. Steadman for their appraisal 
