This is George's shell. George died on January 1st, 2019, New Year's Day. George was the last known Acatonella apexifola, a species of tree snail that's endemic to the island of O'ahu.
An entity that's been on this earth for millions of years, George was the last one. An endling is an animal that's thought to be the last known living individual of that species. Throughout history, there have been a whole line of Georges, 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 Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. Booming Ben, the heathen.
And there was Tuffy, the last Rab'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 five 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 population of Acatinella fuscobasis, which as far as we know is extinct in the wild. We have Akatonella lila, which is a really beautiful species from the northern Ko'olau Mountains. So world population is mostly inside several chambers we have here.
Akatonella bulamoides from O'ahu 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 haven't been described yet. This site is the site of the last known population of acatonellifolgans. 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 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 it 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 Rosie Wolf snail that's crossing the trail right in front of us.
Without even looking you'll encounter them on the trail when you're walking. In the 1950s the Rosie Wolf snail was introduced here from Florida. Its population has just erupted into these incredible numbers.
The rosy wolf snail is a carnivorous snail that solely feeds on other snails and slugs and is currently the main driver of extinction on the island. 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.
The species is Acotonella 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.
We now have close to 40 of those, which I wouldn't say it's 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. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Yeah, so we got a bird. This is pretty significant because there's only about 50 individuals of the 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. And 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 O'ahu. Specifically we're at one of our predator-proof fence sites that's protecting two species of endangered Hawaiian tree snail. This is an Acatinella lila. And there's an Acatinella sauerbiana up here. This is now, we believe, the only spot in the world where there exists...
We have approximately 10 predator-proof fence sites that are either already built or in 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 inside.
Typically, rosy wolf snails will lay a clutch of anywhere from 10 to 30 eggs. This is the second clutch that we found. There's about 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's 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.