Final Comprehensive Conservation Plan - U.S. Fish and Wildlife ...

Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge
Comprehensive Conservation Plan
agreements, and/or conservation easements as key conservation opportunities arise and willing
parties are identified.
Rationale:
Through a cooperative effort culminating in the 2006 National Ecological Assessment Team
Report, the Service and USGS outlined a unifying adaptive resource management approach for
conservation at “landscape” scales, the entire range of a priority species or suite of species known as
“strategic habitat conservation” or SHC. In April 2009, Service leadership established Landscape
Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs). The LCCs are conservation-science partnerships between the
Service, other Federal agencies, States, Territories, tribes, NGOs, universities, and other entities.
They are fundamental units of planning and science capacity to help carry out the functional
elements of SHC, biological planning, conservation design, conservation delivery, monitoring, and
research, and strategic response to climate change.
The Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative (PICCC) is the LCC focused on Hawai‘i, the
Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and central Pacific islands under the U.S. flag. Established in
late 2009, it will create the technical capacity, decision support tools, and organizational structure to
address landscape-scale conservation issues using SHC. These tools will help managers reach
explicit conservation objectives for native species and habitats in the face of climate change and
ongoing threats such as fire, land conversion, and invasive species. The Hawaiian and Pacific
Islands NWRs anticipate using climate change information provided by the PICCC as foundational
products from which to conduct more detailed site-specific and species-specific analyses critical to
the preparation of planning documents and to prioritize on-the-ground conservation actions.
Currently, the Refuge identifies parcels on a case-by-case basis for protection as they become
available from willing sellers. A landscape approach on the slopes of Mauna Kea will allow staff to
focus efforts and work with partners to ensure that habitat needs are met over a larger area. In
addition, corridors between patches of protected habitat are critical for species migration in response
to climate change. Species distribution and abundance is likely to change based upon precipitation
patterns, temperature variations, and shifts in mosquito zones. The Refuge will identify landscapelevel
opportunities to augment the protection currently provided by existing Refuge lands.
2.3.3 Both Hakalau Forest and Kona Forest Units
2.3.3.1 Goal 6: Collect scientific information (inventories, monitoring, research, assessments)
necessary to support adaptive management decisions on both units of Hakalau Forest NWR.
Objective 6.1: Conduct high-priority inventory and monitoring (survey) activities that
evaluate resource management and public use activities to facilitate adaptive management.
These surveys contribute to the enhancement, protection, use, preservation, and management of
wildlife populations and their habitats on and off Refuge lands. Specifically, they can be used to
evaluate achievement of resource management objectives identified under all goals. These surveys
have the following attributes:
• Data collection techniques would have minimal animal mortality or disturbance and
minimal habitat destruction;
• Minimum number of samples (e.g., water, soils, vegetative litter, plants, macroinvertebrates,
vertebrates) to meet statistical analysis requirements would be collected for identification
Chapter 2. Refuge Management Direction 2-33