HEAR Weed Risk Assessment page

About the HEAR Weed Risk Assessment page

Please note that the interpretation of information presented in these documents is that of HEAR, and not necessarily of that of the original publishers of the data or their sponsoring organizations.

• Weed Risk Assessments for Hawaii and Pacific Islands   
  This document was prepared by Dr. Curt Daehler (University of Hawaii Botany Dept.) and Julie Denslow (USDA Forest Service: Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry). The process it describes is referred to on the HEAR website as the "Hawaii Weed Risk Assessment System."

• Call for information  
  A call for information has been initiated by Julie Denslow with the goal of gathering more information about species that the Hawaii/Pacific Weed Risk Assessment system predicts to be "OK [to grow]," but may, in fact, be threatening Hawaii's native or managed plant communities. Julie says: "If you have information that suggests that one or more of these species may be a threat to Hawaii’s native or managed plant communities, we would like to hear about it. Note: Our focus is on species causing actual harm to Hawaiian plant communities. We are unable to evaluate all of the more than 1000 exotic species naturalized in the State, but would like to identify those posing the greatest risk to Hawaii’s native ecosystems or economy."

  The informational document and the questionnaire are presented here. (Please submit completed questionnaires--or any questions you may have about this process--via e-mail to hpwra@hear.org.)

  • Questionnaire: Hawaii/Pacific Weed Risk Assessment - comments on plants cleared by screening  
    (also in RTF format  [RTF is a generic word processing format])

  • Species evaluated by HWRA to pose no threat to native or managed ecosystems in Hawaii or the high islands of the Pacific as of January 30, 2004 
    (also available as an Excel spreadsheet , or in RTF format  [RTF is a generic word processing format])

• Evaluation of Exotic Plants in Hawaii: Where we are. Where we could go.  
  Julie Denslow (USDA/Forest Service) and Curt Daehler (UH/Botany Dept.) have kindly co-authored and provided for online publication a document entitled "Evaluation of Exotic Plants in Hawaii: Where we are. Where we could go." which outlines their views on the near- and medium-term future plans for the Hawaii/Pacific Weed Risk Assessment and the Hawaii Exotic Plant Evaluation Protocol. (There are both an href="hpwra/evalofexplihi.htm">HTML version [better for on-screen perusing] and a PDF version  [perhaps better for printing] available.)

• A related website maintained by HEAR is:
  • Suggested Reading for Kaulunani Invasive Species Workshops
    (prepared for the Kaulunani Invasive Species Workshop series)

• Hawaii Weed Risk Assessment System results for assessed species in the Maui County Planting Plan
  HEAR has produced the following reports which contain the results of the Hawaii Weed Risk Assessment System (HWRA) for all species assessed by that system (as of 12 March 2003) which are recommended for planting in Maui County by the Maui County Planting Plan (MCPP). In an effort to comply with Maui County Resolution 00-24 ("recognizing the threat of invasive alien plant species to the ecosystems, native forests and high quality watershed"), the MCPP is currently being reviewed by the Maui County Arborist Committee (under whose guidance the Plan was produced) to attempt to reduce the number of known or potentially invasive species which are recommended in the Plan for planting in Maui County.

  The nomenclature and spelling of scientific names from the HWRA has not (yet) been verified against any authoritative source; therefore, it is possible that some discrepancies may arise based on that omission. Please write to the HEAR webmaster (webmaster@hear.org).

  All these reports contain the same information as one another, but arranged in various formats to serve varying needs.

  • HWRA-assessed species in the MCPP (alphabetical by scientific name)  
  • HWRA-assessed species in the MCPP (categorized by HWRA pest risk status, then alphabetical by scientific name)  
  • HWRA-assessed species in the MCPP (alphabetical by common name)  
  • HWRA-assessed species in the MCPP (categorized by HWRA pest risk status, then alphabetical by common name)  

What (not) to plant

Contact Info

Dr. Curt Daehler & Julie Denslow may be contacted via information available at their project website, "Progress report: Testing an objective method for identifying invasive plants."