Big news for native snails, or kāhuli, this fall: Bishop Museum announced last month that crews out in the field discovered two species of snails on Kauaʻi that were thought to be extinct.
Those snails, which have not been seen in about a hundred years, are reproducing at the snail rearing facility on Oʻahu.
Bishop Museum malacologist Norine Yeung said that both the Godwinia caperata and Hiona exaequata were found by two conservation managers who were able to help identify them on Kauaʻi.
“We were so excited that we had a healthy population that was quite numerous, comparatively to what the historical records used to say, but we were confident enough that it was healthy enough that we were able to bring some individuals back to study,” Yeung said.
“This is allowing us a chance to figure out, just in case, if something does happen, we can take them from the field, safeguard them until we can figure out a way to put them back into the forest where they can continue to thrive.”
In related news, Hawaiʻi will soon become a resource center for what's called a "frozen zoo," where scientists will expand biobanking, freezing snail cell lines and the lines of other native species.
The Conversation heard from Bishop Museum malacologist Ken Hayes, who explained that the frozen zoo started in 1975 at the San Diego Zoo as a way to recognize the rare and endangered species they housed.
“The founder of this, he had the vision to say, what can we do to conserve these?” Hayes said. “But he had this idea that you could take germ cell lines, the cell lines that produce all the other cells and stem cells, and freeze those down and keep them living frozen tissues that you could then, one day, reconstitute these species, putting back into embryos and surrogates.”
Hayes added that the Bishop Museum will be housing a facility to hold nearly 100,000 tissue samples from various plants and animals across Hawaiʻi and expand that into cell lines for living cultures.
The Bishop Museum’s fourth annual Kāhuli Festival takes place Saturday. For more information, click here.
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 21, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
