Short story where researchers recreate primordial Hawai'ian ecosystem, find it has an awareness

Question

I'm pretty sure I read this in Analog, but it's possible it was in one of the other magazines, like Asimov's, probably in the 1980s or 1990s. I have a vague recollection of a black-and-white drawing of a jungle with a bird.

I don't really recall much beyond what's in the title. Researchers have, by techniques I no longer recall, reconstructed many extinct species in the pre-human Hawai'ian island ecosystem. They have bred these species and tried to reconstruct the ecosystem itself. (I don't remember if they had taken over one of the islands, if they had a preserve on part of an island, or if they were doing this in some kind of containment structure, like a dome.)

One of the last species to be reconstructed and released is a bird that is somehow special; I believe it was mentioned in Hawai'ian traditional narratives (pre-colonization) or something like that. The bird or birds (there must have been more than one, right?) are released, and gradually the researchers start to feel the mental presence of some kind of awareness that seems to be emergent from the ecosystem.

I don't really recall how it ends, but the researchers may have been succumbing to pressure to give up the trappings of civilization and go live wild in the restored jungle.

Answer 1

Finally found this; it's "Spectral Expectations" by Linda Nagata, published in Analog, April 1987.

Researchers are recreating extinct species:

"Did you see my latest creation?" he asked, and nodded toward the bird.

I glanced at it. It was wide awake now, its dark eyes gazing coldly at a moth that fluttered around a nearby light.

"I was wondering if that was one of yours. It looks a little... primeval."

"It's called an o'o," Derek explained. "Moho bishopi, or Molokai O'o, if you prefer. A delicate species, territorial in habit... extinct for over a hundred years."

They released the o'o back into the forest preserve they were trying to regenerate:

"We released the o’o last spring," Terri said, speaking in slow, clear voice as if she were giving testimony at a criminal trial. "Twelve individuals, all mature. I went back about a month later and released four more."

But they found something else was there too:

"Inside my tent. the darkness was impenetrable. I lay still, eyes open on nothingness, waiting. There was no humming. no drumming—only the quiet drip drip of stray raindrops falling on the tent. Yet I felt a presence all around me." Her eyes closed, and she smiled, peaceful. "Its aura was cool," she said, "like leaves under moonlight, humus on the forest floor, tumbling mountain streams. Vast, like the roots of volcanoes. And old—yet younger than the sea. It seemed to permeate the life forms of the forest: the plants, the birds, the snails, the insects and—me."

I misremembered the end, though. Terri was drawn to remain in the preserve, but she eventually had to leave to get food. Instead the story ends with Derek contemplating the replica of the preserve that's been constructed in a research satellite, into which they are about to start releasing the o'o.