This is George's shell.
George died on January 1, 2019, New Years day.
George was the last known Achatinella Apex Fulva.
A species of tree snail that is endemic to the island of Oahu.
An entity that’s been on this earth for millions of years, George was the last one.
An endling is an animal that is thought to be the last known living individual of that species.
Throughout history there have been a whole line of George’s or endlings rather, that are noteworthy.
George the famous Pinta Island Tortoise, which is actually what George is named after
Martha, the last passenger pigeon
Benjamin, the Tazmanian tiger or Thylacine.
Booming Ben, the Heath He.
And there was Toughie, the last Rabb’s Fringe Limbed Tree Frog.
Snails in Hawaii are disappearing at a faster rate than
perhaps any animal on earth right now.
I feel like we have an ethical responsibility to keep these animals around when we're the cause of their declines.
Right now we have about 3,000 individual snails in these six chambers behind me.
We have 38 species from 5 different islands.
All of them are either extinct in the wild or are very very close to being extinct in the wild.
This chamber here holds the world’s population of achatinella fuscolbasis,
which as far we know is extinct in the wild.
We have Achatinella lila, which is a really beautiful species from the northern kohala mountains.
The world population is mostly inside several chambers we have here.
Achatinella bullomoides from oahu and it’s mostly extinct in the wild.
Pretty much every chamber has similar stories.
Every snail that’s ever born in the lab and dies in the lab is preserved in ethanol for future research.
George is right here.
George was unique and we're trying to avoid another George
But we have a hundred species that will be gone within the next five to ten years without intervention.
It’s likely that snails were carried here on birds.
Over millions of years they radiated into this spectacular diversity that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
The islands were really dripping with snails.
There were over 750 described species but there were likely many more than that that just hadn’t been described yet.
This site is the site of the last known population of Achatinella fulgens.
We’ve been coming every quarter and scouring the trees with binoculars.
But within the past say five years,
we've presumed that they're extinct in the wild.
It’s not just one species that’s going extinct really fast,
we’re talking about the collapse of an entire fauna
that’s persisted here for millions of years and that evolved here and doesn’t exist anywhere else.
We’re going back to these populations that we’ve been monitoring for years and we’re finding none.
We’re not entirely sure why it’s happening now but it’s associated with Rosy Wolf Snails.
Right below me here is a Rosy Wolf Snail that’s crossing the trail right in front of us.
Without even looking you will encounter them on the trail when you’re walking.
In the 1950s the rosy wolfsnail was introduced here from Florida.
It’s populations just erupted into these incredible numbers.
The rosy wolfsnail is a carnivorous snail that solely feeds on other snails and slugs.
And is currently the main driver of extinction on the islands.
Hawaii has the unfortunate distinction of being the extinction capital of the U.S.
and likely the world.
it's a weird juxtaposition here in the islands where we're a
tourist destination and there's people that are coming here for our natural
resources and they're looking up to our beautiful Green Mountains but no one
knows that these jewels of the forest are just being
erased from the landscape.
This species is Achatinella fulgens.
Collectively our crew has spent a significant amount of effort trying to keep this species on this earth.
We collected the last individuals from the wild several years ago
and we could only rescue six snails and we now have close to 40 of those.
I wouldn’t say its a success yet but we’re on a good trajectory.
So we kind of just examine all the leaves if there's adults in the cage
then we double-check everything really thoroughly and make sure we can find
any babies.
You'd be surprised at how hard counting snails is.
Yeah sometimes they make a run for it.
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Yep, so we got a birth!
This is pretty significant because there is only about 50 individuals of this species that we know of in the world,
and all of them live in this laboratory.
There’s a couple of species
that we celebrate whenever they have an additional birth to their population
because their numbers are so low and so any additional
genetic diversity is really exciting for the future of their species.
Caring for all of these animals that are on the brink of extinction does carry a level of stress
that probably a normal person doesn't have
They're not our snails.
They're public trust resources that belong to all of us
but we're the ones that are tasked with keeping them on this earth.
Personally I would rather not have a lab like this.
All of our eggs are in one basket here.
If equipment was to fail, disease was to come in, we’re pretty vulnerable.
So when we have to we bring them in here,
and we try to get them out of here as fast as we can as well.
Currently we’re in a remote portion of the Northern Ko’olau mountains on the island of Oahu.
Specifically we’re at one of our predator proof fence sites
that’s protecting two species of endangered Hawaiian tree snail.
This is an Achatinella Lila.
And there is a Achatinella Sowerbyana up here
This is now, we believe the only spot in the world where they’re existing in the wild.
We have approximately 10 predator proof fence sites that are either already built or in the process of being built.
The smooth sides and the curved hood up at the top keep rodents and Jackson's chameleons
from climbing in.
Down lower on the wall we have a shelf that sticks out with
pokey wire mesh that's difficult for the the rosy wolf snail to negotiate.
If it does, we have electrical wires that will electrocute them.
This particular site we’ve had a predator incursion,
the Rosy Wolf snail has made it inside somehow
and so today we’re actually trying to seek and destroy any of them that we can find.
somehow and so today we're actually trying to to seek and destroy any of
them that we find inside.
Typically Rosie Wolf snails will lay a clutch of anywhere
from ten to thirty eggs.
This is the second clutch that we found and there's about like seven or so
in this clutch.
It's a stressful situation.
It’s pretty hard to determine whether or not they’re negotiating these barriers and getting in.
I think the more likely case is that they’ve gone undetected inside after we built the fence around them.
Almost every species that has ever lived has gone extinct
but this is happening so fast it's as if something really catastrophic is happening in the world right now.
We don't really know what will happen
I mean the world will still turn
and Hawaii will still be here but Hawaii loses part of its character when you
have these species that don't exist anywhere else disappear from the
landscape.