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Scott Fretz

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Managing Non-native Game Mammals to Reduce Future Conflicts with Native Plant Conservation in Hawai‘i
Landscape-scale conservation of threatened and endangered species is often challenged by multiple, sometimes conflicting, land uses. In Hawaiʻi, efforts to conserve native forests have come into conflict with objectives to sustain non-native game mammals, such as feral pigs, goats, and deer, for subsistence and sport hunting. Maintaining stable or increasing game populations represents one of the greatest obstacles to the recovery of Hawaii’s 425 threatened and endangered plant species. Many endemic Hawaiian species have declined and become endangered as a result of herbivorous non-native game mammals. Meanwhile, other environmental changes, including the spread of invasive grasses and changing precipitation patterns...
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Field Surveys for Vanishing Species: Closing Data Gaps to Understand Climate Change Impacts on Hawaiian Land Snails and Preserve Biodiversity
The Hawaiian Islands have an extremely diverse number of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Changes brought about by the arrival of humans and the introduction of non-native predators, weeds, and diseases has led to the extinction of hundreds of Hawaiian species – far more than any other U.S. state. To help the State of Hawaiʻi prevent additional species from becoming extinct and to restore at-risk species to secure population sizes, the State, along with federal, private, and scientific partners, is currently developing and implementing a comprehensive conservation plan to protect and manage over 300 declining and endangered native plants and animals on the islands of Maui, Molokaʻi, and Lānaʻi. This...
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Vulnerability of Hawaiian Forest Birds to Climate Change
The Hawaiian Islands are home to some of the world’s most culturally valuable but imperiled forest birds, including brightly colored native honeycreepers, many of which are threatened or endangered. One of the major threats these birds face is avian malaria, which is spread by a species of introduced mosquito and can have death rates exceeding 90 percent. For decades, upper mountain forests have provided refuge for Hawaiian forest birds because mosquitoes (and thus the disease) could not survive the cooler temperatures. However, warming associated with climate change could change this. Scientists used climate data and an epidemiological model to evaluate the future impacts of avian malaria on Hawaiian forest birds...
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Multi-species recovery planning can be a challenging natural resource management task. In collaboration with state and federal agencies, and botanical and technical experts, we developed and tested a multi-step optimization process to assist in identifying the minimum climate resilient habitat for the recovery of multiple threatened, endangered, and at-risk plant species across east Maui. The list of plant species used during this project, and number of planning units required to recover each species, are included.
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Multi-species recovery planning can be a challenging natural resource management task. In collaboration with state and federal agencies, and botanical and technical experts, we developed and tested a multi-step optimization process to assist in identifying the minimum climate resilient habitat for the recovery of multiple threatened, endangered, and at-risk plant species across east Maui, Hawaiʻi. Data include the underlying land-use configuration file, predictive climate models, list of plant species and number of populations to recover/protect, habitat and forest bird distribution information, presence of fencing, land management status, and naming protocol file. We identified a suite of potential conservation...
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