Haleakala National Park - Animals

Native vertebrate animals at Haleakala are a very select group. To get to Hawaii across such vast expanses of ocean, animals had to fly or swim. Not surprisingly the only native mammals at Haleakala are a bat and a seal. The only native reptiles are sea turtles. Birds are the prevalent native vertebrates, and except for migrants, all are endemic, that is, they are found nowhere but Hawaii. Even the Hawaiian goose, the nene, is found only in Hawaii. Long ago its ancestor, a Canada goose, flew here and stayed. Isolated, it evolved on land and even lost its webbed feet (not much use on lava flows). Now like the other Hawaiian land birds—it too is “endemic.”