How a Hawaiian High School Student Inspired Nine New State Animals

What do nine Hawaiian snails have in common with the Texas longhorn, the Florida panther and the California grizzly bear? They’re all U.S. state animals. And the snails hold another notable distinction—they are the country’s first-ever state gastropods.

This past April, Hawaii enacted a law to designate nine species of kāhuli—the Hawaiian word for the native land snails—as the state’s official snails. At an event held for the signing of the bill into law at the governor’s residence, jarred specimens of the nine kāhuli decorated a table. Before committing his pen to paper, Governor Josh Green told lawmakers, students and malacologists—scientists who study mollusks, including snails—that the legislation passed as a direct result of their advocacy.

But the story of Hawaii’s state snails originated with one student, who created a movement that gained momentum long after they graduated, inspiring future classrooms to take up the mantle. Support for the kāhuli law and a greater awareness of the rare species have buoyed conservation experts’ hopes that we will be able to save these endangered species.

“To be able to help people care, people have to be aware,” says Norine Yeung, the malacology curator at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, “because you can’t conserve what you don’t know about.”

The making of a snail law

Twenty-four-year-old Kalikoonāmaukūpuna Kalāhiki, who’s known as Kaliko for short and uses gender-neutral pronouns, began volunteering at the Bishop Museum the summer after ninth grade with two of their friends. “I didn’t really have anything better to do,” they recall, and so spent afternoons digitizing the malacology department’s 248,000 mollusks—which include one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Pacific Island land snails.

Soon the snails tugged at a deeper part of their identity as a Native Hawaiian (Kanaka Maoli, in the Hawaiian language). Kalāhiki learned through historical research and moʻolelo—the Hawaiian oral tradition of stories—of snails’ deep cultural importance. Mere centuries ago, the forests of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi were so replete with endemic land snails that the wind rustling through the trees would have produced a high-pitched whistle as kāhuli shells jostled against one another. Hawaiian cowboys known as paniolos and others plucked snails off branches and traded their variegated shells like baseball cards.

Evidence of the kāhuli’s historical abundance felt jarring as Kalāhiki prepared and scanned empty shells from the Bishop Museum’s collection. They painstakingly removed boxes from packed shelves, carefully handling the delicate remains of extinct snail species. The vibrant orange swirls of a snail shell belonging to the Carelia genus caught their eye—the group once included the largest terrestrial snails endemic to the state. But the three-inch gastropods haven’t been seen on the island of Kauai since the mid-1900s and are presumed extinct.

Carelia snails are not the largest in the Hawaiian Islands today. Ironically, the 8-inch giant African snail and the 2.75-inch rosy wolf snail, found throughout the state, are two of the most damaging invasive species to the islands’ ecosystems. The rosy wolf snail cannibalizes endemic kāhuli; other invasive species, habitat loss and climate change all pose existential threats to Hawaii’s native snails.

Of nearly 800 known species of Hawaiian land snail, have been driven to extinction, according to some estimates. Remaining wild populations are few and far between, often constrained to remote patches of high-elevation forest; other species only remain extant because of captive rearing programs managed by the Hawaii Snail Extinction Prevention Program.

“I think that profound sadness is definitely the reason why I felt so compelled to do the work that I was doing,” Kalāhiki says. Studying songs and stories about kāhuli helped them understand the creatures’ importance to their ancestors—the reason why, for instance, Hawaiians from the island of Niihau traditionally strung together lei consisting of thousands of kāhuli shells. Precontact Hawaiians would also have heard the sound of a forest brimming with native snails. “This is a phenomenon that my ancestors were able to experience and I’m not able to experience because of the colonization of our people,” Kalāhiki says.

Kalāhiki’s genealogical kuleana, or responsibility, motivated them to think of new ways to protect the islands’ dwindling snail populations. On the advice of Yeung, their mentor, Kalāhiki worked with a lobbyist to draft a bill to recognize a state snail. That draft died in the 2020 legislative session because the snail it proposed as the official state species—Laminella sanguinea—is only endemic to Oahu.

“Looking back, it really did not make sense for us to use that approach, because one of the defining characteristics of Native Hawaiian land snails is just how diverse of a radiation they have,” Kalāhiki says.

The conservationists went back to the drawing board. By the fall, Kalāhiki had gone off to Brown University for college, and it seemed that both the bill and the snails might fade into obscurity.

Saving a state species

Few have studied the link between official species designations and conservation outcomes—whether naming a plant or animal a state species quantifiably helps its persistence. In practical terms, a state’s official animal is not afforded any extra protections or conservation funding solely on the basis of its status.

One 2017 study found that at the international level, 35 percent of countries’ national animals were threatened with extinction; however, the authors did not look at the species’ trajectories before and after they were formally recognized as national symbols. The researchers found that only about a sixth of the national animals they studied had any form of protective status in their country. When it comes to official U.S. state flowers and insects, meanwhile, researchers reported in a September preprint that more than half these symbols will face significant declines within their respective states due to the effects of climate change.

In the case of Hawaii’s snails, proponents including Yeung argue that a state designation brings greater public awareness, which in turn paves the way for increased funding. They pointed to the conservation success story of the state bird, a goose known as the nene, as evidence that a symbolic designation can make a real difference in helping a species hang on.

Roughly half a million years ago, a flock of Canada geese were blown off course and landed in Hawaiʻi, from which they evolved into three species including the Hawaiian goose. But hunting by Europeans and predation from their introduced rats, dogs and mongooses depleted the nene’s population to such an extent that by 1950, fewer than 30 individual birds were living in the wild.

By that time, there was enormous goodwill for these rare birds. Nene were designated as the official emblem of the Territory of Hawaii in 1957, prior to Hawaii’s statehood. When Hawaii became a U.S. state, the nene was grandfathered in as the state bird: One conservationist rejoiced that the designation meant “it really does look as though we will be able to save it now.” As official recognition coincided with a critical moment for the birds, advocates were able to fundraise and call for extra protections, says Jordan Lerma, founder of the nonprofit Nene Research and Conservation.

“I think the action of making nene this emblem and designating the nene as a state bird gave people something to rally behind and led to more awareness around their conservation status,” he says. A year after the nene received its official title, Congress gave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service $15,000 to study and manage the dwindling Hawaiian goose population. Captive breeding and reintroduction efforts succeeded, and nearly 4,000 nene live in Hawaii today.

Lerma says he hopes the codification of state snails will prompt a similar turnaround for kāhuli. Rare species face an uphill battle to garner public support, he adds, since advocates often have to first educate people about these creatures’ existence.

The nonprofit leader is not the only one who sees parallels between the story of the Hawaiian goose and the endemic land snails. Yeung recalled learning about the nene in grade school. Its status as the state bird sparked her curiosity: “Why is it a state bird? Where are they located? What are we doing to conserve that?” she remembers wondering.

“And so now I’m hoping that we’ll have that conversation: Where is Kaala subrutila? Why was it a state snail? Where is it located? What can we do to save it?” she says.

Kāhuli consciousness

In some ways, the initial rejection of the snail bill set conservationists’ goals back. But the feedback Kalāhiki received—that lawmakers would be more receptive to a bill that recognized an endemic snail for each Hawaiian island—gave the movement direction and allowed proponents time to plan, they say.

With the support of the Bishop Museum, Yeung and a new cohort of interns launched a voting platform in 2023 to involve residents in nominating their favorite kāhuli. Collectively, residents chose nine snails endemic to the eight major Hawaiian islands—Hawaii Island, Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, Niihau—and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Laminella venusta represented the endemic snail species of Molokai; it had been considered extinct for decades until Yeung rediscovered it in 2017. For Oahu, voters selected Kaala subrutila, a ground-dwelling species with a translucent shell. Inspired by one intern’s obsession with Pokémon, the museum commissioned Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos to illustrate over a dozen snail trading cards.

A Kāhuli or Ka’ala snail (Kaala subrutila) from the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii

The coordinated campaign took off in the state, engaging everyone from keiki (children) to kupuna (elders). Green, the state’s governor, proclaimed 2023 the year of the kāhuli. By the time the revised snail bill made it to a state senate hearing, a classroom of fifth graders testified in favor of it. And one state senator remarked that it was the best piece of testimony he’d heard all year.

“It may seem that it was some sort of thing that magically came up,” Yeung says, but, in reality, the Bishop Museum and other stakeholders worked hard behind the scenes to craft curricula for the state Department of Education and raise awareness for the revised snail bill. “It was a community effort,” she adds.

Kalāhiki recently graduated from college and moved back to Oahu. When they told their high school classmates about studying kāhuli, Kalāhiki says they were often met with stares. Now, seeing how kāhuli have entered the cultural consciousness gives them hope. “It’s really cool to hear that that shift has happened in the culture,” Kalāhiki says.

Now that the bill has been signed into law, conservationists are redoubling their efforts to save the remaining extant species of kāhuli. Lerma says the efforts to codify these species of snails as official state animals won’t “completely solve the extinction problem” but will go a long way toward cementing kāhuli as emblematic Hawaiian creatures, alongside the nene and the brilliant honeycreeper birds.

“How do you get the community to understand and to learn about what makes Hawaii special?” he asks. “I think there’s lots of work ahead, but we’re moving in the right direction.”