EVENTS

Webinar Details:

Title:

Conserving the Kāhuli: Climate Change and Invasive Species Impacts on Native Hawaiian Land Snails

Webinar Description:

Native Hawaiian land snails (kāhuli) are in steep decline due to a combination of historical and current threats, including habitat loss, climate change, predation by invasive species, and limited population sizes. Severe knowledge gaps, such as uncertainty in distribution, habitat requirements, and life history, further hinder conservation efforts. To prevent extinctions, the State of Hawai‘i has initiated a captive rearing program for kāhuli, with a goal of building a network of predator-proof exclosures (kīpuka kāhuli) across the landscape. A team of experts is currently searching potential habitat in Maui Nui to collect wild kāhuli for captive breeding, document their presence, and record habitat metrics. We leveraged the data collected from the search effort in an expert driven process combined with simple and transparent models to create initial climate-based estimates of habitat suitability for these extremely rare species. Beyond identifying landscape-level habitat suitability, ongoing efforts aim to identify fine-scale habitat characteristics and host plants associated with kāhuli species as well as to optimize a network of climate resilient kīpuka kāhuli. Our work highlights that iterative and holistic fieldwork is essential to better understand kāhuli habitats across Maui Nui and identifies key management areas to ultimately secure the future of kāhuli in the face of climate change and invasive species.

Speaker details:

Lilleana (Lilly) Thomey is a field researcher concentrating her efforts on contemporary remote surveys of native kāhuli across Maui Nui. What started the invertebrate focus was a two year Kupu AmeriCorps service position with the Oʻahu SEPP team, partaking in field operations for extant populations and in the captive rearing lab setting. Lilly is now working towards a master’s of science at the University of Hawaiʻi – Hilo in the Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science program. While at UH-Hilo, Lilly will be serving as a Manager Climate Corps member and Fellow with the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, dedicating time, thoughts, and research to invertebrate conservation in our dynamic environments.

Chad Wilhite is a Quantitative Ecologist with the Hawaiʻi Cooperative Studies Unit with a particular interest in spatial and population ecology. Although particularly fond of birds, he enjoys working with and learning from a broad range of taxa including herpetofauna, invertebrates, and plants. He specializes in applying quantitative methods to support conservation practitioners in the face of uncertainty.