A Pocket Guide to Hawaii’s Wildlife is the most complete guide to the wildlife inhabiting America’s only tropical island state. Its coverage, through text and photos of 140 species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and easily observed birds, will broaden your appreciation of Hawaii’s natural life and environment as well as pique your curiosity.
To speak of wildlife on remote islands such as the Hawaiian Archipelago is to talk mostly about birds. The Hawaiian Islands were never connected to any continental source of wildlife. Before the coming of humans, only the chance events of wind and wave brought colonizing animals. The mammals that could make the journey over thousands of miles of open ocean had to either fly or swim. Thus, the only two species to each the islands on their own were a bat and a seal. A few lizards may have arrived by rafting on floating debris, but when the first Polynesian settles arrived, they found mostly birds and these few other species. That changed rapidly as