Pohakuloa Training Area
Sitting in the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, The US Army's Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on the Island of Hawaii is the largest military installation in the state at 133,000 acres, an area slightly smaller than that of Kauai.
Jonathan Sprague
PTA is a vitally important training area to the US military in the Pacific and also home to large tracts of tropical, sub-alpine, dryland ecosystem - one of the most rare ecosystems worldwide - and dozens of threatened and endangered plants, birds, and bats. Through a series of formal section 7 consultations and resulting biological opinions with USFWS going back to 2003, the Army has continued to meet training goals while protecting threatened and endangered species and enhancing the overall ecosystem of the area.
Oahu Tree Snails
Did you know that Oahu tree snails, or Kahuli, are hermaphrodites? Did you also know that they can live up to ten years? However, low reproductive rate and other factors like predation and habitat loss have led Kahuli to become endangered or extinct.
