An endangered tree snail atop Oahu’s highest point is holding up repairs that would allow Hawaii Public Radio to transmit to listeners on Kauai and Oahu’s North Shore during HPR’s million-dollar pledge drive.

Hawaiian Electric Co. has consulted with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Oahu’s "snail extinction prevention coordinator," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a host of other agencies as a HECO crew heads up to Mount Kaala on Wednesday morning to fix the broken power line — while protecting Achatinella mustelina and its sensitive habitat some 4,025 feet up the mountain.

HPR has lost its signal coming out of Mount Kaala before, but nothing that required HECO to send up a crew to repair storm-damaged power lines, HPR spokes­woman Phyllis S.K. Look said.

"And there’s never been an issue with tree snails," Look said. "We’re just trying to keep our sense of humor about it."

HPR gets 175,000 listeners every week statewide but does not know how many listeners on Kauai and the North Shore have been unable to tune into the station, Look said.

Since a storm knocked out power lines on Mount Kaala in September, HPR had been transmitting to Kauai and the North Shore via generators, which ran out of fuel Sept. 30 on the eve of HPR’s $1.03 million pledge drive for donations.

David Sischo, DLNR’s Oahu snail extinction prevention coordinator, will go up to Mount Kaala on Wednesday to work with HECO to protect the habitat of Achatinella mustelina, said Marigold Zoll, DLNR’s Oahu Native Ecosystem Protection and Management manager.

"We’ve been coordinating closely with HECO to assess the situation and to see how they can get the work done in a timely fashion," Zoll said.

HECO spokesman Darren Pai said in a statement: "We are committed to being good environmental stewards. We are taking precautions to ensure we don’t harm any endangered snails in the area while we work on restoring service to Hawaii Public Radio as soon as possible. To accomplish this, we’ve had a biologist survey the area to identify locations that are not to be disturbed during our restorations efforts. To ensure that we meet all requirements, we’ve been coordinating our efforts with DLNR, Division of Forestry and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands. Our crew will be accompanied by a biologist and observers from DLNR when they start work on the repairs on Wednesday morning."

In 1981, 41 species of Oahu tree snails were placed on the federal endangered species list as their numbers plummeted, said Brenden Holland, director of the University of Hawaii’s Hawaiian Tree Snail Conservation Lab.

Today there are only 10 known species of Oahu tree snails left. A single snail remains in the lab from one species, and two other species "only have a handful left in the wild," Holland said.

And only one species remains on Mount Kaala, where they grow up to an inch long and develop "beautiful shells with highly variable banding patterns," Holland said.

"It’s one of a very unusual group of snails that give live birth and live for 20 years and never come down to the ground if they can help it," Holland said. "They live in trees, grow very slowly and take five years to get to reproductive maturity."

In ancient times Native Hawaiians used the shells of the snails as head and neck lei and created chants and legends in the false belief that the snails could sing, Holland said.

Western scientists were eager to discover "the first mollusk that could sing," Holland said. But dissections conducted in the 1700s found no evidence that the snails had any kind of structure that would allow them to sing.

"We think the songs that folks heard in the mountains were produced by a native cricket that hides behind branches and twigs," Holland said.

To avoid damaging either the snails or their habitat, HECO crews would likely fly in on a helicopter and land in a designated zone, Holland said. They could then avoid the tree-loving snails by following designated paths down to the damaged power lines, Holland said.

Asked how many Oahu tree snails remain on Mount Kaala, Holland said, "Maybe there are hundreds remaining. But none of them are secure."