![]() Consequently, only one species colonized the Hawaiian Islands every ∼35,000 years prior to discovery by humans ( Loope 1998 Ziegler 2002). The founding flora and fauna of Hawai‘i had to possess extraordinary dispersal capabilities to cross half of the Pacific Ocean. The most extreme example of isolation is found in the Hawaiian Archipelago, which developed over a 30 million year period and is no closer than 3,200 km from the nearest continent ( Ziegler 2002). The remoteness and extreme isolation of the Pacific islands, both in space and time have contributed to the development of unique and naïve endemic biota which evolved nowhere else on Earth. ![]() ![]() Although the eradication of mammals from large areas has resulted in the restoration of some ecosystem processes such as natural forest regeneration, changes in other processes such as fire regimes, nutrient cycling, and invasive plant proliferation remain more difficult to reverse at larger landscape scales. New fence designs are capable of excluding all mammals from areas to protect endangered native birds. The exclusion of other invasive mammals is now being undertaken with more sophisticated control techniques and fences. Rodenticides which have been tested and registered for hand and aerial broadcast in Hawai‘i have been used to eradicate rats from remote islands to protect nesting seabirds and are now being applied to larger islands to protect forest birds. The control and eradication of invasive mammals is the single most expensive management activity necessary for restoring ecological integrity to many natural areas of Hawai‘i and other Pacific Islands, and have already advanced the restoration of native biota by removing herbivorous ungulates from >750 km 2. Invasive mammals have irreversibly altered ecosystems of Hawai‘i and other tropical Pacific islands in numerous cases through novel herbivory, predation, and diseases, thereby causing the disproportionate extinction of flora and fauna that occur nowhere else on Earth.
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