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Hawaii’s Statewide Aquatic Wildlife Conservation StrategyThe purpose of Hawaii’s Statewide Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Strategy (SAWCS) is to provide the opportunity for aquatic resource managers to develop a comprehensive planning process to help manage Hawaii’s unique aquatic wildlife. Hawaii’s SAWCS is truly comprehensive in scope, recognizing the interconnectedness of Hawaii’s diverse aquatic species and creating an integrated, strategic blueprint for the protection and recovery of Hawaii’s aquatic biodiversity. The SAWCS document can be downloaded as a pdf file (1.4 MB) by clicking here. Hawaii's SAWCS was developed through collaboration with and building on existing efforts. The SAWCS contributors include experts, researchers, organizations, stakeholders, and other interested parties and members of the public, as well as the members of the Statewide Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Strategy Advisory Committee and participants in technical workshops and public meetings. Recognizing the effectiveness of taking conservation actions at a habitat level in addition to a species-specific level, the SAWCS emphasizes threats to species and their habitats, and conservation needs at three levels: statewide, ecosystem, and taxa-specific. Additionally, the SAWCS outlines existing and needed monitoring programs for species and habitats as well as how the SAWCS will be implemented and monitored. Hawaii’s SAWCS is based on Hawaii’s Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy (CWCS), which includes both aquatic and terrestrial species and habitats. The CWCS was developed by the Division of Forestry and Wildlife and the Division of Aquatic Resources. The first step in developing the SAWCS was selecting Species of Greatest Conservation Need (pdf file, 236 KB). The Hawaiian Islands are biologically diverse, and aquatic fauna are characterized by high levels of endemism; therefore, to recognize the global rarity of these species or the importance of Hawai‘i to these species, Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) were selected using the following criteria: 1) all endemic aquatic animals, plants, or algae; 2) any aquatic animal taxa on the Federal threatened, endangered, candidate, or species of concern list; 3) any animal protected by the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act; 4) any native aquatic animal on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources' (IUCN) Threatened Red List or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) appendices; and 5) additional animals suggested by the Statewide Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Strategy Advisory Committee as deserving of attention for other reasons. Given the large number of species, for organizational and management purposes, species were grouped into the following categories: freshwater fishes, freshwater invertebrates, anchialine pond fauna, marine mammals, marine reptiles, marine fishes, marine invertebrates, and aquatic flora (see also "Hawaii's Aquatic Species Database" below). For each SGCN or groups of SGCN, fact sheets were created and include the following information: distribution and abundance of species, location and condition of key habitats for these species, description of the major threats to these species and/or their habitats, proposed conservation actions to conserve these species and their habitats, and recommendations on methods to monitor the effectiveness of the conservation actions. Please note that arthropods that spend part or all of their life in freshwater habitats were included in the CWCS, and links to their fact sheets are below. Fact SheetsFreshwater Fishes: Freshwater Invertebrates: Anchialine Pond Fauna: Marine Mammals: Marine Reptiles: Marine Fishes: Marine Invertebrates: Aquatic and Terrestrial Arthropods: Hawaii’s Aquatic Species DatabaseThe Aquatic Species Database (Excel file, 2.7 MB) includes all non-microscopic freshwater and marine animals for which we could find records. Developed independently of the SAWCS, it is compiled from Bishop Museum and other expert databases and texts. For each species, the database includes scientific name, endemic status, if the species is a Species of Greatest Conservation Need, if the species is listed in the Endangered Species Act, CITES, or IUCN Red List, and where available, species distribution, depth of occurrence, and any unusual ecology. For more information, please contact:
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