04-12-2017, 02:45 AM
I was listening to HPR recently about how the African Snail http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/good-bad/achatina.html was brought here in 1936 and it began eating lots of plants. So naturally they brought in the rosy wolfsnail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euglandina_rosea to eat up all the Giant African Snails. It worked great, however, within a year the rosy wolfsnail killed almost all of the o'ahu tree snails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%CA%BBahu_tree_snail which are endemic and now endangered. It continued to eat it's way through other slugs and snails to the point where almost 1/3rd of all mollusk extinctions can be traced back to the introduction of the rosy wolfsnail.
Introducing a new species to the island's restrictive ecosystem usually results in upsetting several other niche species. There are countless examples here in Hawaii because the introduction usually only takes 1-5 years to dramatically alter the ecosystem.
Introducing a new species to the island's restrictive ecosystem usually results in upsetting several other niche species. There are countless examples here in Hawaii because the introduction usually only takes 1-5 years to dramatically alter the ecosystem.