The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI) works with the U.S. Army Garrison – Hawaiʻi Natural Resources Program under a cooperative agreement to oversee compliance with the Federal Endangered Species Act on the island of Oʻahu. The goal of the program is to effectively balance the requirements of the Army’s training mission with its natural resource responsibilities.

Of the 474 federally listed endangered species in Hawaiʻi, the Army’s natural resources program provides on-the-ground management for 90 of these species on Oʻahu, including plants, birds, tree snails and insects.  The endangered plants managed by the program represent some of the planet’s rarest – some having less than 50 individual plants left in the world.

The Army’s natural resources program applies an ecosystem-based approach to managing training lands to ensure species and the habitat to support them are restored and protected now and into the future. The program grows both endangered and common native plant species and outplants over 10,000 of them back into the wild each year.