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Picture of the Hawaii Islands


More native species have been eliminated in Hawai'i than anywhere else in the United States and most places in the world.


The geographical isolation of the Hawaiian Islands has resulted in the evolution of a highly endemic biota: approximately 80% of Hawaii's plants, 100% of its forest birds, and 67% of its arthropods are found nowhere else in the world. But human colonization of the Islands has severely impacted native plant and animal populations--more than 75% of the historically known endemic bird species are now either extinct (23) or endangered (30). Of the nearly 1,300 endemic plant species described from Hawaii, 104 are considered extinct, and 267 of the remaining taxa either are listed or are proposed as endangered or threatened species.

The area we work in stretches west and south across most of the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii. It includes many of the islands of the trust territories of Polynesia and Micronesia. It is a geographic area that covers 6 time zones and both sides of the equator. This area is more than twice the size of the contiguous 48 American states. These distances and the isolation of the island systems make it logistically challenging to do our work.

Mariana Archipelago

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U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, USA
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Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center
3190 Maile Way, St John Hall, Room 408
Honolulu, (Oahu) HI 96822
Phone: (808) 956-5668

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This page was last updated on Oct 4, 2004.