RACING TO SAVE Hawaii’s Precious SNAILS

A CENTURY AGO, the Hawaiian Islands were home to more than 750 species of land snails, almost all “found nowhere else in the world,” says David Sischo, a wildlife biologist and National Geographic Explorer coordinating the state’s Snail Extinction Prevention Program. But in recent decades, forest clearing and invasive predators like carnivorous snails have wiped nearly half these little-understood species off the map. Another hundred species, including the Oahu land snail, face imminent extinction. Hawaiian researchers have joined with National Geographic’s Photo Ark Species Impact Initiative to hold off that fate by surrounding small acreages with six-foot-high solid walls tricked out with booby traps—among them slick sides, snares, and electrical arrays—to stop predators. The aim? “To just keep the snails on Earth,” says Sischo, until better technology comes along. “There’s…