Native butterfly and snail getting help

State officials are gearing up to give a helping hand to some of Hawaii’s smallest creatures through programs involving captive rearing and release into the wild.

Biologists with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources on Monday described separate plans to boost the populations of the Kamehameha butterfly and a rare Hawaiian tree snail — species found nowhere else on earth but losing the battle on their own against alien species and habitat loss.

The efforts were discussed Monday in the first of 19 daily news conferences planned by the DLNR in conjunction with the World Conservation Congress, the premier conference of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, being held Sept. 1-10 in Honolulu and for the first time in the United States.

More than 5,000 conservationists, officials and dignitaries from around the world — and possibly including President Barack Obama — are expect to attend the gathering at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.

With the world spotlight on Hawaii, state officials are aiming to highlight some of the conservation efforts being made right here.

First up are the efforts to save Hawaii’s smallest creatures, which officials say are critical to the overall integrity and health of the islands’ ecology and ecosystems.

William Haines, a research entomologist with the state, said most people think of native birds and plants when they discuss Hawaii’s vast biodiversity.

“The bulk of the biodiversity is actually in the little guys,” Haines said. “It’s in the insects and the snails and the spiders. We have over 5,000 species of native insects in Hawaii found nowhere else in the world.”

Unfortunately, most of them, including the Ka­mehameha butterfly, are being muscled out of their habitats by invasive critters such as ants, Haines said.

“What we’re trying to do is bring back these native insects that really perform a lot of the ecological function in Hawaii, things like pollination and decomposition. Insects play a major role in Hawaii ecosystems,” he said.

The Kamehameha butterfly, the state’s official insect, is considered a critical pollinator for numerous native plants. Although the butterfly is historically known to have been on all the main Hawaiian Islands, it is no longer found in some areas where it used to be common and it appears to be on the decline.

Haines helped to run the Pulelehua Project, which included an online citizen science study that sought to map current populations of the butterfly using observations submitted by the public, combined with surveys of remote areas by scientists.

The study’s results indicate the butterfly is surviving only in patches of habitat, mostly in higher- elevation areas and in the backs of valleys that have not been disturbed.

The next phase of the project is to capture adult Kamehameha butterflies, breed them and reintroduce them to the wild, along with the mamaki plant, which is their natural host plant, said Cynthia King, a state entomologist.

King said the project is aiming to commence captive breeding by the end of the year or early next year.

Haines said two female butterflies can produce a couple of generations and thousands of offspring. They will generally be released in the species’ former natural habitat in wetter windward locations.

“We’re trying to bring it back to the lower elevations,” he said, adding that the reintroductions might also have to involve some form of ant control to prevent the vulnerable caterpillars from being attacked.

While the Kamehameha butterfly project is gearing up, a similar one involving native snails, or kahili, is already going strong.

David Sischo, coordinator of the state’s Snail Extinction Prevention Program, said that 50 Achatinella lila tree snails were released high in the Koolau Mountains on Thursday in Hawaii’s first reintroduction of captive snails into the wild.

These are the progeny of seven adult snails that were collected in 1997 for captive breeding, the fourth and fifth generation raised in a lab.

About 300 snails still remain in the lab, and officials are aiming to release 50 additional snails into a predator-proof enclosure in October and 50 more at the end of the year.

Sischo said there was once more than 750 different species of Hawaiian tree snails, but now it is estimated that as much as 90 percent of the diversity has been lost.

Some 44 species of Hawaiian tree snails are listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and there are lots of others that aren’t listed, but are experiencing declines in their populations and are at risk of extinction.

Currently, only one small population of the Achatinella lila tree snail is known to exist in the wild.

Now, after Thursday’s operation involving the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii and the Oahu Army Natural Resources Program, there is a second wild population.

“This is really a milestone for conservation to be able to reintroduce this species back into the wild,” Sischo said.